Indoor testing of road vehicle suspensions

The paper presents a method for the indoor testing of road vehicle suspension systems. A car suspension is positioned on a rotating drum located in the Laboratory for the Safety of Transport at the Politecnico di Milano and it is excited as the wheel passes over a cleat fixed on the drum. The wheel accelerations, displacements and the forces/moments acting at the suspension-chassis joints are measured in the frequency range 0–120 Hz. Five special six-axis load cells have been designed and used. Transient wheel motions have been recorded. The influence of the running conditions on the relevant performance indexes related to the vibration behavior of the tire/suspension system has been assessed.