Effect of obstacles on roads with different waviness values on the vehicle response

Abstract The effect of the increasing number of cosine-form obstacles, which are superposed on a standard homogeneous longitudinal road profile, is studied when the waviness of the basic road profile changes in the range from 1.5 to 3.5. First, the effect of the composed profile on the power spectral density (PSD) is analysed. It appears that the primary PSD in the form of a straight-line in the log–log plot breaks into two straight-line partial segments with quite different waviness values in the long and short wavelength bands. This seems to be a suitable model of a highly deteriorated road. Next, the effect on the response of two typical vehicles, viz. a personal car and a three-axle truck, is studied, and rather different results were obtained. In a summary valuation, it appears that the presence of additional obstacles causes independence of some of the vehicle response quantities of the primary waviness.