PHD Vehicle Dynamics: PhD candidate Saskia Monsma

Assessment of vehicle behaviour is still basically a matter of transferring the proper feeling to the driver. A driver needs to feel safe, comfortable, and he/she should feel confident enough to deal with potentially dangerous traffic conditions. The contact between vehicle and road, i.e. the tyre properties, is critical here.

Proper feeling

The assessment of this ‘proper feeling’ is not a straightforward matter. It is not only about technology but also the driver's psychology and perception play an important role. HAN Automotive Institute is rising to the challenge of developing assessment tools to give this ‘feeling’ a firm experimental basis.

The institute therefore aims to gain a further understanding about the type of tyre that optimises this feeling and contributes to an improved vehicle-driver performance.  

Cooperation with Vredestein

A PhD project was set up on this topic in cooperation with Vredestein and the Laboratory of Automotive Engineering of the Helsinki University of Technology (Prof. Matti Juhala). Saskia Monsma is the PhD-researcher and lecturer at HAN University of Applied Sciences. Her research includes objective and subjective vehicle assessment, modelling of driver behaviour and identification of driver model parameters in relationship to conditions of traffic and road around the vehicle.

Special emphasis is put on workload measures, possibly in correspondence with secondary tasks. The relative importance of tyre characteristics with respect to driver perception and control behaviour will be explored based on a neural network approach.

The research project started in 2006 and will last until 2010.