Study of the Subjective and Objective Correlation on Vehicle Ride Comfort

The ride comfort is a critical attribute in the process of vehicle design and performance development. Determining the objective metrics that can effectively represent subjective feelings is an important precondition for vehicle dynamics CAE simulation and analysis. In this paper, the correlations between vehicle ride subjective ratings and objective tests are studied. A total of 7 characteristics of the subjective ratings, which include primary ride, secondary ride and impact, are selected and defined after the customer survey. The subjective ratings are collected by driving four cars on four different road surfaces with three different drivers. For the objective metrics, the R.M.S. (Root Mean Square) method was adopted with different frequencies for vehicle’s body motion and secondary vibration. In addition, the impact data was characterized by the peak to peak value instead of the VDV (Vibration Dose Value) method. Through regression analysis and verification, 13 objective metrics that have a strong positive correlation with the 5 subjective characteristics were determined.