Vehicle–road interaction analysis for pounding between cargo and trailer-bed

Abstract

The study is aimed at understanding the likelihood of occurrence of vertical separation between the cargo and the trailer of a truck resulting from the amplified vertical vibrational response of the vehicle. Certain road geometries can induce excessive amplification in suspension response of the heavy vehicles leading to large vertical accelerations in the cargo. The cargo of interest is a modular building unit (MBU) which is a long cuboidal structure that requires to be transported from the factory to the building site. The current work deploys an experimentally validated mathematical pitch-plane model of a trailer and a road undulation (road bump) geometry for the analysis. Parameters such as suspension stiffness, damping, vehicular speed, road undulation geometry and tie-down strap strength are used to quantify the probability of vertical separation that can occur between the MBU and the trailer-bed by employing Monte-Carlo simulations. Vertical separation is converted to vertical pounding (impact) velocity and values reaching up to 1.5 ms−1 have been found to be probable at the end of the study.