Optimizing Medium Duty Truck Ride and Handling: A Cooperative Effort with Truck Designers 933011

This paper describes two projects where truck and tire engineers worked together to best meet ride and handling objectives, as defined by the “voice of the customer”. These projects are examples of processes where the expertise of independent partners is utilized to achieve rapid and practical results. Each partner uses its proprietary methods without having to reveal them. The final choice is selected using the customer's perspective. While this paper encourages the use of the best available technology to measure ride and handling, it does not concentrate on the measurement techniques. The translation of customer-driven, typically subjective, comments into engineering terms is more important. Otherwise, the new product may meet the wrong objectives.

Each of these projects is actually more complex because design and tuning of other components also were involved. Focusing on the interaction of the truck and tire teams simplifies the discussion while still demonstrating the issues.