Development and Validation of a Double-Sensor Hump Calibration Method for Articulated Vehicle Model Identification

The realistic simulation of the dynamic responses of a moving articulated vehicle has attracted considerable attention in various disciplines, with the identification of the vehicle model being the prerequisite. To this end, a double-sensor hump calibration method (DHCM) was developed to identify both unladen and laden vehicle models, consisting of a sensor layout optimization step and a system identification step. The first step was to optimize the number and position of sensors via parameter sensitivity analysis; the second was to inversely identify the vehicle system based on sensor responses. For comparison, the DHCM and the existing single-sensor hump calibration method (SHCM) were used to calibrate a small-sized vehicle model and a multi-axle articulated vehicle model. Vertical accelerations of the vehicle models were then simulated and characterized by power spectral densities (PSDs). Validation against experimental measurements indicated that the PSDs of the models identified with the DHCM matched the measured PSDs better than those of the SHCM, i.e., the DHCM-identified model accurately simulated the dynamic response of an articulated vehicle with relative errors below 16% in the low-frequency range. Therefore, the DHCM could identify models of small-sized vehicles and multi-axle articulated vehicles, while the SHCM was only suitable for the former.