Journal Article
Proving Ground Optimization and Damage Correlation with Customer Usage
2011-04-12
2011-01-0484
Proving grounds are an extremely efficient means of qualifying the durability of vehicle components. They accelerate damage accumulation rates so failures are detectable in a very short period of time. It is important that proving ground damage is correlated with target customer usage. It is also important to determine the most efficient use of the proving ground in order to meet project targets and minimize overall development costs. This paper describes the latest techniques for proving ground correlation and optimization. Acceleration, strain, wheel force and other types of data are collected on a vehicle as it traverses different proving ground surfaces. Comparable data are also collected from instrumented ‘customer’ vehicles. The objective of the analysis is to determine which mixture of proving ground surfaces offers the best representation of customer usage while minimizing the total test time.