ACCEPTABILITY OF SHOCK ABSORBERS FOR ROAD ROUGHNESS MEASURING TRAILERS

The accuracy of the response-type road roughness meters depends primarily on how the dynamic characteristics of the test vehicles adhere to prescribed standards. The standards for shock absorbers used in roughness-measuring vehicles as defined by ASTM are discussed in this paper. A new acceptability criterion is proposed that assures a higher overall accuracy of the measuring system and at the same time allows for larger deviations of the shock absorber parameters from the standard values. The method allows for verifying the acceptability of shock absorbers mounted in road roughness measuring vehicles. The effects of typical nonlinearities in shock absorber characteristics are also presented.