36,000 m.p.h. test rig

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33626, 30 August 1974, Page 4

36,000 m.p.h. test rig

The humps and jolts which a vehicle sustains during 36,000 miles (57,936 km) of rough motoring can be experienced in an hour during computer-con-trolled tests devised by a British manufacturer. The system, developed by Ford with the help of university scientists, is believed to be the fastest and most accurate in Europe for vehicle noise and vibration research. Engineers travelled thousands of miles and taperecorded the vibrations

caused by rough roads to gather information for the tapes which control the computer. One hundred different “roads” are stored in the company’s computertape library. When a tape is played back through the computer, it transmits instructions to the test rig to shake and roll the vehicle. It works so rapidly that the vehicle’s responses to a 100-mile (161 km) trip can be reproduced in 10 seconds. Sensors attached to the vehicle and its suspension record the response to the tests, and the company says that the machine can pick up vibrations and sounds which are too faint to be

detected by a human testdriver. The rig which does the shaking is attached independently to each of the vehicle’s wheels, lifting as well as shaking the vehicle,

as the time-lapse photograph illustrates.