Stochastic Approach to Terrain Characterization

Principal Investigator
T.C.Sun (Wayne State U.)

University Researchers
Milton Chaika (Wayne State U.)
Kussiy Alyass (Wayne State U.)

Government
David Gorsich (TARDEC)

In the designing or testing of a vehicle or fleet of vehicles, knowledge of the structural loads is essential to determine durability and reliability. Industry and the Army use terrain models in the virtual prototyping processes. The army needs structural models of the highest fidelity in evaluating designs and in planning tests for the future combat systems. The Army also needs the input from the simulation terrain profiles for lab tesing of vehicles. A better definition of the roughness of a testing track could improve and could set a standard of the testing of new vehicles.

Hence, our objectives are:

• To research and develop statistical methods of characterizing terrain topography.
• To bring modern time series methods into the modeling of vehicle dynamics and actual road scenary, and into the lab testing of vehicles.
• To research and develop correlation and validation methods that relate the terrain topography to the damage that a vehicle incurs while traveling over that terrain.
• To find a better definition of the roughness of a testing track.