Dynamical Responses of a Nonlinear Vehicle-Road Coupled System

The nonlinear vehicle-road coupled system is modeled as a seven DOF vehicle moving along a simply supported double-layer rectangular thin plate on a nonlinear viscoelastic foundation. The vehicle suspension stiffness, suspension damping and tire stiffness are described by the nonlinear model. The material of the upper pavement surface is modeled as the nonlinear viscoelastic Leaderman constitutive relation. The dynamical response of the vehicle-road coupled system is obtained numerically by the quick direct integral method and four steps Runge-Kutta method. The effects of system parameters on vehicle body vertical acceleration and pavement displacements are also obtained. It is found that the nonlinearity of vehicle and the viscoelasticity of road material should be considered when study the vehicle-road system responses.