Abstract—Amid, the fastest growth of automotive industry and due to constant depletion of earth's energy resources automotive transportation will become smaller and lighter like three wheeled vehicle, in the search for better fuel efficiency. Regarding road safety and accident avoidance capabilities, handling behaviour of road vehicles is very important. Handling characteristics of road vehicle can be well determined by theoretically as well as experimentally. Practical testing methods are accurate and easy to reproduce. The various transient response test procedures, like step steering test, random steering test, sinusoidal steering test, steering sweep test, pulse input test etc. are popular in automobile industry. In this paper, pulse road test has been performed for a three-wheeled motor-vehicle due to its wide range of frequency and driver-vehicle system combination. It doesn't require much skill of a driver, as well as wide proving ground is required since test vehicle runs almost straight. Data are recorded using LAB View signal express software and these data are used for evaluating handling parameters for a three-wheeled motorvehicle using MATLAB® code.

Index Terms—Pulse road test, Handling behaviour, Handling parameters, Three wheeled vehicle

Cite: Sudheer Kumar and V K Goel, "Pulse Road Test for Evaluating Handling Characteristics of a Three-Wheeled Motor Vehicle," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Special Issue, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 95-100, January 2014.