Estimation of dynamic tire force by measurement of vehicle body responses with numerical and experimental validation

Abstract

Abstract Bridge modal parameters, including modal mass, are important factors that directly affect the bridge responses under various excitations. To identify these parameters, the simultaneous measurement of the bridge excitation and its corresponding bridge responses is typically required. However, traditional methods of exciting a bridge using a hammer or a shaker have the limitations of small impact energy, narrow frequency range, and other site-specific difficulties. However, the vehicle-induced load, which excites the bridge through the vehicle-bridge interaction, can be used in bridge parameter identification if the vehicle-bridge contact force is estimated well. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to estimate the dynamic components of the vertical tire contact forces by measuring the vehicle body acceleration and angular velocity at selected locations on an ordinary vehicle. A Kalman filter with augmented tire forces in the system state vector is employed. Observability and sensitivity analyses provide the method’s theoretical foundation. Numerical examples for different road roughness conditions demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has good accuracy and robustness against noise and modelling error. A commercial light vehicle was used in the conduct of field measurement to validate the proposed method. The estimated dynamic tire forces are in good agreement with reference measurements.