Long term WBV measurements on vehicles travelling on urban paths

This paper describes the results of a long-term whole-body-vibration monitoring campaign performed on different cars with different drivers. The weighted and the un-weighted root-mean-square acceleration, the MTVV and the VDV have been monitored on five different cars in regular usage for over one hundred hours of measurements on urban roads and highways. The variability of the above parameters has been statistically analyzed in order to assess the time requested for the convergence of standard indexes to their average values. The aim is to supply a general reliability evaluation so as to minimize the on-field tests and to provide a scientific support to the design of such experiments. A comparison between different vehicles is presented and discussed; the correlation with speed measured by a GPS system is analyzed with probabilistic assessments. Results showed that the minimum time for reliable measurement was approximately 30 min for each driving condition (urban, carriage road, highway). The MTVV/a(w) ratio was usually larger than 1.5 (even on short measurement periods), thus indicating the unsuitability of the basic ISO 2631 criterion. The 8-h based VDV provided indications compatible with the a(v) criterion.