Roadway-Vehicle Interaction, Physical Indexes, and Human Judgment of Ride Quality

Present serviceability index (PSI) modeling has been an important subject for decades. Other dynamic indexes characterizing a roadway such as the international roughness index (IRI), averaged rectified slope (ARS), and averaged rectified speed (ARV) have been proposed and studied. However, the roles played by these indexes in the interaction between road, vehicle, and human ratings have not been made clear. A unified physical model linking the static profile of a roadway and the dynamic response of a vehicle to the profile to the serviceability index of the roadway is presented here. Analytical expressions for jerk index, acceleration index, ARV, ARS, and IRI are derived from the developed model in terms of the physical parameters for roadways and the dynamic characteristics of a vehicle. Then a linear relation between the PSI and the logarithm of the jerk index is proposed. Using the jerk index computed from field profile data, the linear functional form for the PSI is verified, and regression R 2 values higher than 0.94 are obtained for various types of pavements. The same analysis is performed for other dynamic indexes, and the R 2 values are found to be approximately in the range from 0.70 to 0.80. These results indicate that the theoretical model correctly predicts and explains the human rating of ride quality and that the jerk experienced by raters in a moving vehicle dictates the ratings. Moreover, the relationship of the static parameters of roadway profiles with human ratings is discussed using the conventional approach.