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A commercial truck manufacturer wanted to
develop an off-road mileage accumulation course for its vehicles that was:
Equivalent to a course currently in
use (in terms of damage and which subsystems or components were exercised to
failure) ;
Cheaper to run than the current
course;
Shorter than the current course
but not more severe.A
SixD engineer worked with the
client's technical team to develop and implement a multi-step program to
achieve this goal, which involved:
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Identifying all road surface types in the
existing course
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Running an instrumented mule over the course under
various load conditions and at various speeds. Data was used to analyze
road surfaces for
damage accumulated per mile and determine the spectral damage content.
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Surveying the prospective site for road surfaces that matched the original.
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Running the instrumented mule over a candidate course to
identify segments that excited the vehicle in the same way as the original
course.
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Combining candidate road segments that (a) were as damaging overall as
the original course,
(b) were located reasonably close to each other, and (c) could be covered
in
several consecutive work shifts.
Benefit: A satisfactory equivalent
course was identified within a month of the first mule test. The new course
cut in half the number of miles required to achieve the desired damage
levels, shaving time and cost from the testing process.
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