The Analysis on Applicability of Ride Comfort Standards

to Vehicles

Aihua Tang1, Chen Bao2, Ou Jian2, Guohong Deng2, and Jianping Tian1
1
No.180,Xueyuan Street, Huixing Road, Zigong, Sichuan.PRC
2
Chongqing University of Technology.PRC
tahme@163.com, cbyztm@sina.com,
{oujian,dengguohong}@cqut.edu.cn, tjp893@126.com

Abstract. Aiming for the shortage of ride comfort standards appled to various
vehicles and different terrains at present, evaluation systems applied to wheeled
vehicles were introduced, which include of two categories. One system, which
includes ISO 2631 and other similar standards, is generally used to evaluate
ordinary vehicles. The other based on two limits, such as 6 W average absorbed
power and vertical acceleration peak, is used by the United States of America
and by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to evaluate the NATO
Reference Mobility Model (NRMM) .A passenger car test was carried out
－
according to the national criteria: GB/T 4970 1996 and the objective ride
comfort value was obtained. The applicability of evaluation systems based on
limits was researched. The significance of this research is better to understand
and apply the ride comfort standards to various vehicles and different terrains.

Keywords: vehicle, ride comfort, criteria, evaluation method.

1 Introduction
Four methods to evaluate ride comfort (human response to vibration) objectively are
used throughout the world at present. The ISO 2631 standard is adopted mainly in
Europe and the British Standard-BS 6841 is used in the United Kingdom. Germany
and Austria use VDI 2057 while Average Absorbed Power (AAP) is used by the
United States of America (USA)and by NATO in the NATO Reference Mobility
Model (NRMM). There is a need to determine which of these four standards or
methods are the best to evaluate ride comfort appropriately on various vehicles and
different terrains, with the emphasis on ride comfort over predominantly rough, off-
road terrains. The relationships between the measures of the standards can also be
very useful when vehicles from manufacturers using different standards must be
compared against each other, or to compare measurements with historical data[1].

2 Evaluation of Ride Comfort

The methods to evaluate ride comfort objectively of ordinary vehicles are different
from military tactical vehicles. The following methods should be considered

M. Zhou and H. Tan (Eds.): CSE 2011, Part II, CCIS 202, pp. 269–275, 2011.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011
270 A. Tang et al.

synthetically: ISO 2631 and similar standards applied to ordinary vehicles running on
the road. The evaluation methods based on limits are for the off-road vehicles
travelling on off-road terrains. A short description of the three objective methods used
will now be given.

2.1 ISO 2631 (1997)

The revision of ISO 2631 released in 1997 [2] introduces new experience and
research results. The standard rules that the Root Mean Square (RMS) value method
can be applied to evaluate the human comfort and healthy effect of vibration, when
the vibration peak factor is below 9 (peak factor is the ratio of root acceleration peak
value to RMS value). The method applied to all kinds of ordinal vehicles, including
all terrain vehicles travelling on the road. Vibration Dose Value (VDV) also can be
used to evaluate as the vibration peak factor is higher than 9. Measurements which are
for motion sickness range between 0.1 and 0.5 Hz in the ISO 2631 standard.

2.2 BS 6841

The BS 6841 standard considers a frequency range of 0.5–80 Hz. Instead of time
dependency curves, a new method based on the concept of VDV was introduced. The
frequency weighting for z-axis seat vibration is modified to be in closer agreement
with the results of experimental research in this method. For each axis, a component
ride value can be determined as well as an overall ride value. At first, the acceleration
sampled is weighted. Different weight functions for three directions exist. As for the
ride comfort, the RMS value of the weighted signal is determined as follows[3]:
N
1
RMS =
N
∑a
n =1
2
n
(1)

The RMS value is compared with the subjective value to get an estimate of the
most probable human reaction related to the vibration. The frequency range is
extended to 0.5 Hz to compensate for measurements of motion sickness. The ride
value obtained may be compared directly with that obtained at the same speed on the
road in another vehicle. A doubling in the ride value corresponds to a doubling of the
vibration discomfort.
In principle, the methodology and calculation of the standard are the same as the
ISO 2631-1:1997 standard. The main difference between the BS 6841 standard and
the ISO 2631 (1997) is that weighting replaces Wk where Wb is the result of intensive
laboratory studies. Fig. 1 gives a comparison of acceleration weighting curves used in
ISO 2631 (1997) and BS 6841 (1987) respectively.

2.3 VDI 2057

In 1963, the Society of German Engineers published VDI 2057 standard making them
the first to produce a standard to quantify ride comfort. In principle, the VDI standard
defines a calculated ride comfort index (K-factor) that is compared with a subjective
table to determine the ride as subjectively experienced by humans. In 1979, the VDI