Abstract
An important, yet time-consuming part in vehicle development are durability sign-off tests. These tests should reflect customer´s usage. The design of such test requirements, which constitutes the fatigue design target, is based on fatigue-specific histograms such as rainflow matrices, range-pair histograms, etc. The fatigue design target is an abstract specification in terms of histograms which has to be translated into a test schedule of real physical events or actions exciting the vehicle. This paper presents a novel method that calculates the optimal combination of measurement segments or proving ground events to meet the defined target.
A case study is presented. The aim is to define a 4-poster durability test schedule for a FIAT pick-up car. This schedule should exist of events contained in FIAT's durability test track in Italy and should be 'fatigue-equivalent' to the 'customer usage' of the vehicle in Brazil.