Fatigue relevant road surface statistics
Abstract
Road roughness is a major source of vehicle fatigue. To improve the understanding of vehicle durability, statistical methods are applied to characterise measured road profiles. Different statistical road models are used to generate corresponding synthetic road profiles. Vehicle fatigue is assessed utilising a simple quarter-vehicle model in combination with the Palmgren-Miner damage hypothesis, Basquin’s relation and Rainflow counting. Several road realisations (Monte-Carlo simulation) provide an estimate of the expected fatigue damage. The results suggest that actual roads cause more damage than synthetic Gaussian roads, possibly due to occasional road transients (bumps and holes), causing large loads on the vehicle. Thus, a road model being the sum of Gaussian ‘noise’ and transient events is suggested.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Asphalt Pavement Performance Evaluation
Infrastructure Maintenance and Monitoring
Transport Systems and Technology
Publication details
- Journal / source
- The Dynamics of Vehicles on Roads and on Tracks Supplement to Vehicle System Dynamics
- Publisher
- CRC Press
- Volume
- 41
- Pages
- 724–733
- Publication date
- 30 January 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Book chapter