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Road Profile Data
Road Profile Data
The interest of the highway engineer is focused on road roughness in the frequency range of interest, which corresponds to
a wave number range appropriate for the prevailing traffic speed. The effect of road roughness on the design and operation
of road vehicles has been a subject of intensive research since 1960. In the literature considerable effort has been spent on
the investigation of vehicle vibration excited by surface irregularity. Road profile measurement is an important step
preceding vehicle development. The present paper deals with the measurement and analysis technique to evaluate road
roughness in the form of power spectral density (PSD). A profile measuring trailer unit has been designed and developed.
Measurements of road roughness have been taken on five types of Indian roads and one mosaic floor (for academic interest
only) using an on-line system, and results are represented by power spectral density and compared with the standard results
given by the International Standard Organization (ISO) to classify the type of road.
Keywords: Road roughness; Power spectral density; Road profilometer; Bituminous road; Portland cement concrete road
NOTATION INTRODUCTION
With the growing awareness for better highways for an ever
Ak (n) : FFT component
increasing traffic loading and concern for aging highway
C : capacitance systems, the Government of India has established the National
Highway Authority (NHA). The major function of the NHA
fcc : cut off frequency will be the planning of new routes, preparing maintenance
schedules and acceptance or replacement of newly constructed
fs : maximum frequency of measured signals highways. Naturally, appropriate management systems are
K : number of segments needed to make objective assessment of highway quality.
Generally, highway engineers using a response type single
N, Csp : constants wheel trailer unit, eg, Dipstick or Merlin devices, specify road
roughness as the total vertical distance measured by the
P ( fn ) : power spectrum estimate
measuring wheel per kilometer of distance travelled (mm/km).
R : resistance Such specification of road roughness by highway engineers is
convenient for the construction and maintenance of roads, but
Sqr ( η) : power spectral density of road surface profile is not useful for providing input to the vehicle model, for
evaluation of ride index and passenger comfort. These devices
T : sampling interval, s do not yield data to obtain the power spectral density (PSD) of
the road surface roughness, which is essential for evaluation of
Z0 : vertical undulations of the road surface vehicle ride behaviour. The purpose of the present work was to
measure the road profile in PSD form, which can be used as
Z&1 − Z& 0 : relative velocity of trailer frame and the road- input to the vehicle model. Vehicle designers also use road
following wheel roughness data to investigate its effect on vehicle braking and
steering behaviour, as the normal tyre forces are affected by
Z&&1 : frame vertical absolute acceleration road roughness. According to International Standard
Organization (ISO)26311, the ride comfort is specified in terms
of root mean square (RMS) acceleration over a frequency range.
K Ramji is with Mechanical Engineering Department, College of
The pavement surface profile of interest to the highway
Engineering, Visakhapatnam 530 003; A Gupta and Prof V Kumar are
with Electrical Engineering Department and V H Saran and Prof V K engineer covers a wavelength range2 of about 0.01 mm to 100 m.
Goel are with Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department all at This range is too wide to be measured in terms of a single scale,
IIT Roorkee, Roorkee 247 667. but can be described and measured in four scales: micro-texture,
This paper (modified) was received on June 8, 2004. Written discussion on macro-texture, mega-texture and road roughness. The road
this paper will be received till January 31, 2005. roughness usually covers a wavelength from 0.1 m to 100 m.
Trailer
Optocoupler unit
Road profiling
wheel
Safe excitation, V : 5 1
f cc = (1)
The relative velocity pick-up is a cable-activated transducer of 2π RC
5V/m/s sensitivity, that produces a voltage proportional to the
relative velocity between the trailer frame and the road- The values of C and R were taken as 0.47 µF and 17 kΩ ,
following wheel. A product of ASM (Automatic Sensorik respectively, which gave the cut off frequency as 20 Hz. Filtered
Messtechnik) of Germany, the unit is precalibrated to acceleration signal is integrated using a software integrator
International Standards. Internal signal conditioner conditions based on trapezoidal rule. The integrated acceleration signal is
the signal of the sensing element to user-friendly voltage, again filtered using a band pass filter. In the absence of filtering,
current or digital pulse. More details of velocity transducer are: any offset present can cause numerical overflow. Filtered
velocity pick-up data are subtracted from integrated
Model : WGS5-500-10V-T5-L10-HG
acceleration data and signal is again integrated to get the
Function designation : Position and relative roughness profile. This roughness data (vertical undulations) is
velocity transducer used to obtain power spectral density. The scheme of
Range : 0 V-10 V dc signal operations is shown in Figure 2. The sampling and computation
conditioner of the road profile are performed as a function of distance
instead of time, which makes the measurements independent of
Sensitivity : 5 V/m/s trailer speed and easier to handle. For this purpose an
Linearity : 0.1% of measured value optocoupler, which gives pulses at regular interval of distance
travelled, has been mounted on the rear axle of the trailer.
Maximum acceleration : 60 g
In any experimental test program proper care needs to be taken
Max velocity : 10 m/s in order to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the test data.
Sensor component : Tachogenerator Signals obtained from the transducers through ADC card are
processed to obtain useful information. The first requirement is
Accuracy : 0.1 %
to sample the transducer signals and filtering the signals to
It has been described earlier that the vertical undulations remove any electrical noise. The accelerometer signals are
(profile) of the road surface are recorded as a function of integrated by software employing the trapezoidal rule to obtain
distance travelled by the trailer unit, which is measured by a velocity signals.
single perforated disc mounted on the rear axle of the trailer The road surface profile of wavelength of 100 mm or more are
unit along with an optocoupler. The optocoupler consists of a normally encountered on typical highways and are of interest
gallium arsenide infrared emitting diode and a silicon photo- to vehicle dynamicist. The profile data was acquired by
transistor mounted in closed proximity. The two are optically normally towing the trailer unit at a speed of nearly 1 m/s.
coupled but electrically insulated from each other. Whenever Thus, the maximum frequency of measured signals fs was about
an infrared ray from the diode passes through the perforation in 10 Hz. Therefore, the minimum sampling frequency, known as
the disc, a pulse is generated. The three pneumatic tyres the Nyquist rate should be 2 fs or 20 Hz in order to prevent
(3.50 × 10, 4 PR) of the trailer including the caster wheel are aliasing. Sampling at points which are too far apart will lead to
each of 372.5 mm φ . Therefore, the linear distance covered in confusion between the low and high frequency components in
the original data and is called aliasing. Before choosing the
one wheel rotation is 1170 mm. The optocoupler unit has a
sampling frequency one more important factor, ie, the lowest
perforated disc with 10 equidistant holes on its circumference. frequency of interest must be considered, which was chosen as
Therefore, the distance travelled by the trailer unit between two 0.1 Hz.
adjacent holes, which corresponds to two consecutive pulses is
117 mm (or 0.117m), which is also evident from the raw data of The fast Fourier transform (FFT) is efficient and fast method
for computing the discrete Fourier transform (DFT).
bituminous newly laid road given in Table 1. With a 10-hole
Computation of DFT required M2 complex operations
disc, the distance travelled between two consecutive pulses is
(addition and multiplication) and hundred of hours of machine
0.117 m. time prior to 1965. In 1965, a method for computing the DFT
The signals from the two transducers, ie, relative velocity pick- was given by Cooley and Tukey24 that requires approximately
up and acceleration pickup are taken to ADC card (8112 HG) Mlog2M operations where M is power of 2. This method of
using shielded cable, to prevent noise from external electric and computing Fourier Transform which requires a number of
Distance Vertical undulations, Distance Vertical undulations, Distance Vertical undulations, Distance Vertical undulations,
travelled, mm/m travelled, mm/m travelled, mm/m travelled, mm/m
m SEC1 SEC2 m SEC1 SEC2 m SEC1 SEC2 m SEC1 SEC2
0.000 0.423 0.402 5.850 0.245 3.149 11.700 2.766 0.188 17.550 0.117 0.502
0.117 0.090 0.553 5.967 1.768 4.341 11.817 2.440 0.124 17.667 1.109 1.045
0.234 0.157 0.388 6.084 4.348 3.992 11.934 3.081 0.562 17.784 0.509 1.289
0.351 0.535 0.677 6.201 3.830 4.634 12.051 2.466 1.102 17.901 0.626 1.626
0.468 1.789 0.382 6.318 4.864 3.164 12.168 1.812 1.917 18.018 0.298 1.296
0.585 1.361 0.540 6.435 5.854 2.883 12.285 1.978 1.083 18.135 0.029 1.186
0.702 1.643 1.759 6.552 5.033 2.654 12.402 1.364 0.066 18.252 0.546 1.055
0.819 2.444 1.325 6.669 5.932 1.406 12.519 1.061 0.725 18.369 0.108 3.199
0.936 1.487 1.056 6.786 5.028 2.084 12.636 2.302 2.093 18.486 2.005 3.344
1.053 0.739 2.557 6.903 3.600 1.751 12.753 2.474 5.441 18.603 0.244 1.074
1.170 1.919 1.516 7.020 4.861 3.295 12.870 3.875 6.683 18.720 1.434 1.901
1.287 0.697 0.454 7.137 3.759 2.552 12.987 1.265 6.503 18.837 1.099 0.718
1.404 1.684 0.887 7.254 2.492 2.357 13.104 1.381 2.050 18.954 0.891 1.343
1.521 1.934 0.155 7.371 2.290 0.358 13.221 1.564 4.335 19.071 0.434 2.352
1.638 0.406 1.694 7.488 0.748 1.335 13.338 0.769 5.148 19.188 1.121 1.246
1.755 1.256 0.772 7.605 0.325 1.913 13.455 2.547 5.120 19.305 1.279 1.039
1.872 2.099 0.936 7.722 1.475 2.451 13.572 2.537 3.049 19.422 2.348 2.249
1.989 0.650 0.198 7.839 3.435 0.997 13.689 2.020 0.324 19.539 3.429 2.258
2.106 1.149 1.116 7.956 4.675 0.524 13.806 3.778 1.992 19.656 1.978 0.062
2.223 2.247 1.772 8.073 4.002 1.768 13.923 3.365 1.583 19.773 2.880 0.246
2.340 2.318 0.879 8.190 3.274 2.109 14.040 3.220 0.090 19.890 4.053 0.588
2.457 2.344 0.327 8.307 3.021 0.728 14.157 5.322 0.253 20.007 4.493 0.590
2.574 4.001 0.503 8.424 4.009 2.157 14.274 4.221 1.983 20.124 5.836 1.423
2.691 2.929 0.918 8.541 3.351 2.807 14.391 2.545 1.964 20.241 2.290 1.388
2.808 2.695 0.986 8.658 5.645 2.435 14.508 4.165 2.454 20.358 5.859 2.048
2.925 3.799 0.250 8.775 4.374 2.576 14.625 4.286 4.026 20.475 1.937
3.042 3.718 0.184 8.892 0.776 2.632 14.742 3.798 5.574 20.592 2.835
3.159 3.081 1.121 9.009 0.856 3.331 14.859 2.276 5.303 20.709 0.302
3.276 3.240 0.418 9.126 1.721 2.494 14.976 2.720 5.548 20.826 0.063
3.393 0.019 0.672 9.243 1.056 3.000 15.093 1.404 4.259 20.943 2.559
3.510 0.153 0.133 9.360 1.681 3.272 15.210 1.855 6.397 21.060 2.599
3.627 1.881 0.139 9.477 1.151 2.523 15.327 0.922 6.572 21.177 1.697
3.744 2.640 0.458 9.594 1.277 2.396 15.444 0.244 3.741 21.294 1.605
3.861 2.040 0.272 9.711 0.148 4.642 15.561 0.232 3.292 21.411 0.327
3.978 0.853 0.510 9.828 1.015 4.646 15.678 0.531 3.547 21.528 0.921
4.095 0.498 0.528 9.945 0.850 2.878 15.795 0.656 1.739 21.645 0.668
4.212 0.954 0.533 10.062 0.13 4.387 15.912 0.818 1.931 21.762 2.062
4.329 0.969 2.612 10.179 0.633 3.931 16.029 1.349 2.555 21.879 0.915
Table 1 Cond
Distance Vertical undulations, Distance Vertical undulations, Distance Vertical undulations, Distance Vertical undulations,
travelled, mm/m travelled, mm/m travelled, mm/m travelled, mm/m
m SEC1 SEC2 m SEC1 SEC2 m SEC1 SEC2 m SEC1 SEC2
4.446 0.264 3.182 10.296 0.833 0.333 16.146 0.853 2.336 21.996 0.065
4.563 1.376 4.113 10.413 1.630 0.616 16.263 1.051 2.207 22.113 0.144
4.680 2.286 1.653 10.530 2.146 0.641 16.380 1.596 2.886 22.230 0.036
4.797 3.480 1.510 10.647 3.186 0.773 16.497 0.386 2.958 22.347 1.187
4.914 4.799 0.552 10.764 7.994 0.933 16.614 0.079 2.322 22.464 1.548
5.031 4.202 0.037 10.881 1.373 1.049 16.731 0.868 2.175 22.581 1.284
5.148 3.030 0.540 10.998 3.429 0.816 16.848 0.993 1.688 22.698 1.400
5.265 0.944 1.466 11.115 2.638 0.458 16.965 0.298 1.514 22.815 2.778
5.382 0.456 2.437 11.232 1.742 1.824 17.082 1.629 1.345 22.932 2.839
operations equal to Mlog2M become known as Fast Fourier Finite impulse response and magnitude response of band pass
Transform. The FFT developed by Cooley and Tukey24 in 1965 filters and low pass filters are shown in Figures 3(a) and 3(b) and
is significantly less computationally intensive method for Figures 4(a) and 4(b), respectively.
evaluating the DFT and thus particularly attractive for real time The signal so obtained after filtering, were further processed, to
spectral analysis using digital signal processing (DSP) bring it to a useful form. The accelerometer signal is to be
technology. The FFT algorithm used for computing DFT has integrated to obtain the velocity and displacement signals.
been taken from Samuel and David25. The FFT algorithm
requires the number of samples to be an integral power of 2.
0.30
Since, 29 is equal to 512, with proper adjustment of the delay, a Series 1
0.25
sampling rate of 61 Hz was chosen which gives a resolution of
0.20
0.12 Hz in power spectral density, which is acceptable.
Magnitude
0.15
The signals obtained from transducers are properly filtered and 0.10
long wavelength components are attenuated before the data is
0.05
processed to evaluate road roughness profile. Two types of
0
filters, hardware filters and software filters are used for filtering
0.05 0 50 100 150 200 250 300
the signals. Software filters are used to remove noise present in
transducer signals. Signals from velocity pick-up are filtered 0.10
using a low pass filter (0 Hz-10 Hz), while the signals from 0.15
Time, s
acceleration pick-up are filtered using a band pass filter (0.3 Hz-
10 Hz). Figure 3(a) Finite impulse response of a band pass filter (0.3 Hz-9 Hz)
where f (t) is continuous function of t over a ≤ t ≤ b , and the RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
integral may be evaluated using equal or unequal intervals. In
In the present work, the road tests were conducted on five
the present work, the integral has been performed based on the
different roads and one mosaic floor using the road
Trapezoidal rule employing equal intervals, which is chosen
profilometer designed and developed in Vehicle Dynamics
because of its simplicity and reduced errors at high sampling
Laboratory (VDL), IIT, Roorkee. Using power series analysis,
rate. This particular integration technique has poor response
best-fit curves were obtained for each road profile yielding
characteristics near the Nyquist frequency but presents no
different values of Csp and N, which are given in Table 2. Five
difficulty in this application, as the frequencies contained in the
different types of road surfaces consist of four bituminous roads
signal, are typically less than 10 Hz, well below the Nyquist
from serial number 1 to 4, one Portland cement concrete (PCC)
frequency. The signal corresponding to road surface undulation
road at serial 5 and one mosaic floor (similar to very smooth
is obtained which is further processed for power spectral
surface) at serial number 6 are evaluated in this study. The tests
density.
were performed at slow speeds by pushing the trailer unit on
Welch27 gave a method for estimation of power spectra by using these road surfaces and the mosaic floor with test lengths
FFT algorithm. It involves sectioning the record, taking varying from 21 m to 60 m. The measured data was recorded by
modified periodograms of these sections, and averaging these a microcomputer, mounted directly on the road profilometer,
modified periodograms. The data sample X ( j ) is divided into which computed the power spectral density values.
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