Olley's "flat ride" revisited

The aims of the work described in this paper are twofold: (a) to understand the fundamental issues which underpin the analysis of the two-ended vehicl e ride problem and (b) to assess the relevance of Olley's original guidelin es to today's vehicles. For the first of these aims a comprehensive set of results is presented. These are based on predictions from a range of relati vely simple models e.g. a 2D, 4 dof model. The results are intended to add a degree of both clarity and comprehensiveness to the understanding in part icular of front/rear suspension balance, wheelbase filtering, pitch/bounce frequency relationship and the flat ride idea in response to discrete event inputs. For the second aim of bringing the results up to date for modem ve hicle designs, this was simply achieved by using data from current vehicles .