Research on Rapid Measurement of Medium Short Wave Longitudinal Road Profiles

The longitudinal profile of a road causes vehicle vibration and thus an important parameter in research on the ride comfort and durability of vehicles. However, large-scale measured profiles of actual roads remain unavailable owing to technical measurement difficulties. We report a vehicle-mounted system for measuring short-to medium-wave road profiles in a broad frequency range. In this system, the longitudinal displacement of the vehicle is measured by incrementally revolving encoder, the vehicle attitude is measured by a gyroscope, and the vertical displacement is measured by laser displacement sensors in conjunction with dual accelerometers. An algorithm was designed to reconstruct road profiles on the basis of the double integral of acceleration with respect to time and vehicle attitude compensation, and used for the rapid measurement of short- to medium-wave longitudinal road profiles. The accuracy of the road profiles measured using this system were confirmed by comparison with results obtained using a precision level and a static laser scale. The proposed system can accurately and rapidly measure road profiles at a large-scale, and thus provide important information in vehicle-related research.