A half-car model for dynamic analysis of vehicles with random parameters

A half-car model is used to investigate the dynamic response of cars with uncertainty under random road input excitations in this paper. The mass of the vehicle body, mass moment of inertia of the vehicle body, masses of the front/rear wheels, damping coefficients and spring stiffness of front/rear suspensions, distances of the front/rear suspension locations to the centre of gravity of the vehicle body and the stiffness of front/rear tires are considered as random variables. The road irregularity is considered a Gaussian random process and modelled by means of a simple exponential power spectral density. The mean value and standard deviation of the vehicle's natural frequencies and mean square value of vehicle's random response are obtained by using the Monte-Carlo simulation method. The influences of the randomness of the vehicle's parameters on the vehicle's dynamic characteristic and response are investigated in detail using a practical example.