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Nibble is torsional vibration at the steering wheel of a vehicle. Typically it occurs at a resonant frequency of the steering and suspension system excited by the 1st harmonic tire/wheel force. A nibble target is established to be consistent with customer satisfaction target and then cascaded down to the targets for vehicle nibble sensitivity and tire/wheel inputs. Hence accuracy of the sensitivity and the tire/wheel force is important for a Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) nibble simulation. On-vehicle wheel-end forces are fore/aft and vertical tire/wheel forces acting on a vehicle spindle in an operating condition. This paper presents a methodology to estimate the wheel-end forces. The methodology was applied to investigate the effect of the tire flat-spot on the wheel-end forces. Tires were flat-spotted for one week and two months to simulate customer usage profiles. They were tested to measure the growth of the wheel-end forces.

Transient road disturbances excite complex vehicle responses involving the interaction of suspension/chassis, powertrain, and body systems. Typical ones are due to the interactions between tires and road expansion joints, railway crossings and other road discontinuities. Such transient disturbances are generally perceived as “impact harshness” due to the harshness perception as sensed by drivers through both sound and vibration. This paper presents a study of quantifying the effects of sound, steering wheel and seat/floorpan vibrations on the overall perception of the “impact harshness” during impact transient events. The Vehicle Vibration Simulator (VVS) of the Ford Research Laboratory was used to conduct this study. The results of the study show that sound and vibration have approximately equal impact on the overall perception of impact harshness. There is no evidence of interaction between sound and vibration.