Effect of Tire Pressure on the Fatigue Life of an Automotive Three-Wheeled Vehicle’s Chassis & Body 2024-26-0365

The need and dependency on objective measurements are increasing rapidly across all industries for reliable and faster data for product validation, and the automotive industry is no different. Objective measurements are becoming increasingly popular than subjective evaluation as they offer objectivity and repeatability. Typical industry practice for structural validation is to acquire the vehicle responses, viz. spindle accelerations, wheel displacements, wheel forces, speed, strain at a few critical locations, and others as per the requirement. Vehicle responses are usually acquired on specific road surfaces, test tracks, and proving grounds. Prior to the tests or measurements, the vehicles are configured as per the company's recommendation, such as tire pressure, camber angles, engine oil, coolant oil type and quantity, load, and load distribution, to name a few. The test vehicles with which these measurements are carried are usually only with these vehicle settings. However, the actual customer usage deviates significantly from the manufacturer's recommendations. In the current work, the effect of tire pressure on the fatigue life of the chassis and the body of an automotive three-wheeler is studied with varying tire pressures. Current work also presents the data of the deviation of fatigue life from an actual customer's usage to the estimate from the measurements.