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A hybrid approach to predict road-induced loads in vehicle structures is presented. The technique involves full vehicle dynamic simulation using measured wheel forces, absolute wheel vertical displacements, and steering angle as input. The wheel vertical displacement is derived from the measured wheel acceleration. This approach avoids the use of tire-road interface modeling. It also improves the conventional loads measuring process with minimum instrumentation and data acquisition. Existing load data from a test vehicle is used to validate this approach. Computed component loads show good agreement with measurements.

Methodology of determining coefficients of material strain energy functions of rubbers from experimental measurements of homogeneous deformations is examined within the scope of the 3rd order deformation theory [3]. Closed-form solutions of most frequently employed material testing deformations - simple tensile, pure shear and equal bi-axial deformations - are examined to reveal the shortcomings of using any one deformation in characterizing the strain energy function, In order to obtain a more representative material strain energy function, employment of more than one homogenous deformation is recommended along with improved material sampling. In situations, however, where data from simple-tensile deformation alone are available a set of constraints on the coefficients have been derived that improves the extrapolation characteristics of the fitted function.