Vehicle Dynamics Model for Predicting Maximum and Typical Acceleration Rates for Passenger Vehicles

Effectively modeling the acceleration behavior of vehicles is an important consideration in a variety of transportation engineering applications. The acceleration profiles of vehicles are important in the geometric design of roadways and are used to model vehicle behavior in simulation software packages. The acceleration profile of the vehicle is also a critical parameter in fuel consumption and emissions models. This paper develops and validates a vehicle dynamics model to predict the maximum acceleration rates of passenger vehicles. The model is shown to be superior to other similar models in that it accurately predicts speed and acceleration profiles in all domains and for a variety of vehicle types. The paper also modifies the model by introducing a reduction factor, which enables the model to predict the typical acceleration patterns for different driver types. The reduction factors for the driving population are shown to follow a normal distribution with a mean of 0.60 and a standard deviation of 0.08. The paper also provides new data sets containing maximum and typical acceleration profiles for thirteen different vehicles and twenty different drivers.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Civil Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Civil Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Snare, Matthew C.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Rakha, Hesham A.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Kachroo, Pushkin
• Dion, Francois

• Traffic Simulation
• Vehicle Dynamics Models
• Vehicle Acceleration

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-08262002-141356

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/34779