Assessment of Ride Quality and Road Roughness by Measuring the Response from a Vehicle Mounted Android Smartphone

Abstract

Road surface roughness is considered as one of the most important aspect in functional condition of roads indicating to riding comfort in both transverse and longitudinal direction. For all highway projects maintaining proper surface evenness has been a mandatory requirement from the government of India. In this study, pavement unevenness was estimated using an android-based smartphone and system rely on the movement of a suspension system in response to the unevenness of the road surface travelled by a vehicle. Roughness index (RI) is an indicator to measure the standard road roughness. Conventional way of measuring RI involves usage of bump integrator, profilometer and roughometer. Present study proposes an alternative method to measure roughness using smartphones. The study was carried out in 2 different locations and 3 different smartphones to obtain the magnitude of deflections. Data collected using standard fifth wheel bump integrator is used for validation. Data collected through smartphone i.e., accelerometer sensor details was given as input to Fast Fourier transforms (FFT) to find the magnitude of deflection on the road. The results obtained from smartphones was then correlated with the existing roughness index data collected by standard fifth wheel bump integrator to establish an equation to predict RI using an android mobile.