Development of an Accelerated Endurance Test Facility 952634
Development of a state of the art facility specifically designed for accelerated endurance testing (AET) of heavy trucks has been completed. The 1 km road features Belgian block, broken concrete, ruts, potholes, sine sweeps, S turns, a turning pad, a curbing event and a frame torsion event. In keeping with modern trends to streamline product development the facility is adjacent to the company's Technical Center and Prototyping facility creating a central, full capability development center.
The roughness profiles of the random road surfaces were developed by relative damage calculations using theory of random vibration to establish the proper acceleration factor. A broad range of operating conditions may be simulated by varying speed and event mix.
An absolute correlation of the track to other test facilities and field conditions in the USA, Mexico and Canada has been made using a vehicle equipped with 18 transducers. Over 20,000 km of road data has been included in this effort. The field measurements are broken into two hour segments and treated statistically so the track damage and peak values may be compared to average and extreme field conditions.
