Abstract
The paper details a study using passenger vehicles to develop a series of objective measurement techniques to quantify the vehicle response to steering inputs. This area is commonly known as steering feel and is for normal driving at low to medium lateral acceleration levels.
The objective measurement techniques were validated by making a series of component changes to a single vehicle. The component changes gave clearly defined alterations to the vehicle´s subjective feeling and therefore provide a clear basis for judging the objective results.
The vehicle response was altered by reducing the front and rear tyre pressures, which changed the vehicle´s understeer balance and transient response; and increasing the rear axle kinematic understeer, which changed the vehicle´s lateral acceleration response time and the transient balance between yaw velocity and lateral acceleration.
These differences are clearly shown by the developed measurement techniques, which successfully characterised the component change effect on the vehicle´s measured response. This gave confidence in the objective techniques and will allow them, together with the subjective ratings of the component changes, to be used to objectively evaluate several different vehicles with varying subjective feeling.
Previous studies (1, 2) have been published on steering feel, but they used subjective data from different vehicles, instead of examining component changes, to demonstrate the accuracy of the steering feel measurement techniques.
Keywords:Vehicle Dynamics, Steering Feel, Ride and Handling, Chassis, Suspension, Steering.