Abstract:
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The improvement of the ride comfort is a priority for carmakers. With the aim of upgrading the occupant’s well-being, the amount of NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) studies has been increased lately. NVH is the study of acoustic and mechanical oscillations in vehicles and their subjective perception by the vehicle’s occupant. These studies are especially important when designing intensive care ambulances due to the gravity of the patient’s health.
Patients’ transportation is considered to be one of the critical procedures when assisting an injured person and an optimal transport can be crucial for the patient life. In order to improve the patient’s comfort and safety a reduction of the vibration and noise in the cab is essential. Temperature fluctuation in the cabin should also be considered for the patient welfare. These three effects are studied not only individually but also their interaction.
In a previous study some tests were performed in order to obtain the acceleration in different points of the ambulance as well as the spring stiffness and damping constant. With these parameters and a subjective test to different people who lay in the ambulance’s stretcher a program was made in order to calculate the vehicle comfort for different environments.
Based on these calculations, in this work a theoretical optimization in order to obtain the maximum comfort for the patient transported in the ambulance is developed. To obtain this result, the best combination of spring stiffness and damping constant will be searched through mathematical methods. |