Vehicle fatigue damage caused by road irregularities

Klas Bogsjö and Igor Rychlik

Abstract:: Road roughness causes fatigue-inducing loads in travelling vehicles. Road sections with a high degree of roughness are of special interest, since these have a significant impact on
vehicle's fatigue life. This study is focused on the statistical description and analysis of vehicle damage caused by irregularities. Standard statistical analysis tools are not straight-forwardly applicable, due to the nonstationary property of the irregularities. However, it is found that the road irregularities influence on vehicles can be accurately described using a `local' narrow-band approximation
of the fatigue damage intensity.

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