Title: Laplace distribution models for road topography and roughness

Authors: Pär Johannesson; Krzysztof Podgórski; Igor Rychlik

Addresses: SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, Box 24036, SE-400 22 Göteborg, Sweden ' Department of Statistics, Lunds University, SE-220 07 Lund, Sweden ' Mathematical Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Göteborg, Sweden

Abstract: Gaussian models are frequently used for road elevations. However, these models are often only valid for short sections of the road. Here we present a comprehensive approach to describe various aspects of road surface/elevation by using extensions of Gaussian models arising from random gamma distributed variances. These random variances result in the Laplace distribution and thus we refer to the so defined models as Laplace models. The approach is shown to perform well in modelling road topography, road roughness and multi-valued responses of forces and bending moments containing transients. The different Laplace models are presented together with numerical examples and Matlab code for simulation.

Keywords: road profile; topography; road roughness; generalised Laplace distribution; non-Gaussian process; autoregressive process; PSD; power spectral density; ISO spectrum; IRI; international roughness index; fatigue damage.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVP.2017.085032

International Journal of Vehicle Performance, 2017 Vol.3 No.3, pp.224 - 258

Received: 02 Dec 2015
Accepted: 15 Jun 2016
Published online: 10 Jul 2017 *

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