Prediction of the subjective impression of passenger car roll dynamics on the driver based on frequency-domain characteristic values

Characteristic values are essential for the design and assessment of driving dynamics during the early stages of the development process of passenger cars. Compared to other aspects of vehicle dynamics however, the relationship between measurable parameters and the subjective perception of vehicle roll dynamics has not been researched extensively. In this paper, a study is presented in which several variants of a vehicle with an electronically controlled suspension were rated by test subjects regarding its roll dynamics and measured in a standardised driving manoeuvre. The subjective ratings and objective characteristic values were then used to derive models to predict the subjective liking of several roll dynamics aspects based on objective frequency-domain parameters which could be achieved with relatively high accuracy. The resulting prediction models were validated using measurements of additional vehicles even though this only allowed for a rough validation as no subjective ratings were available for the validation set. Nevertheless, the predictions for the validation variants seemed plausible and reflected the basic expectations regarding the vehicle characters of the validation set. The results of this investigation thus laid a good foundation for follow-up studies to further increase the reliability and robustness of the prediction models.