The Synthesis of Road Vehicle Vibrations Based on the Statistical Distribution of Segment Lengths

This paper presents the development of a method for synthesising non-stationary random vibrations generated by road transport vehicles. The paper builds upon the observation that non-stationary random vehicle vibrations are composed of a sequence of zero-mean random Gaussian processes of varying standard deviations. It shows how a change-point detection algorithm can be applied to the instantaneous magnitude of sample vibration records to identify the length of stationary segments within the record. The statistical distribution of the segment lengths is characterised with a hyperbolic trigonometric function. The paper shows how the segment length distribution model is used to form a sophisticated control strategy for synthesising non-stationary random vibrations. The paper explains how the new control system is incorporated into a standard random vibration simulation system and presents results which validate the effectiveness of the method.