SearcharxivSearch

arXiv · 2511.08839

Output-only road roughness identification from vehicle axle accelerations through a universal smoothing method

Abstract

This paper presents an output-only method to identify road roughness profiles from axle accelerations of a moving vehicle. A two degree of freedom half-car model is discretised with a zero-order hold and a backward-difference approximation of the roughness rate, which introduces both the current and previous roughness inputs into the observation equation. This modification enables joint input state estimation with limited measurements using a Universal Smoothing (US) method, which belongs to the family of Minimum-Variance Unbiased (MVU) estimators. To improve numerical robustness under high process noise, stemming from modelling errors such as neglected bridge vehicle interaction, the system inversion is regularised by truncated singular value decomposition. The method is validated on a full-scale bridge with a commercial SUV at two different speeds. Compared to the Dual Kalman filter and an MVU-based smoother, the proposed US achieves stable, accurate reconstructions across different scenarios and remains numerically well conditioned when noise increases. Practical aspects of tuning, window length selection, and computational cost are also discussed.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Zihao Liu, Daniel Dias-da-Costa, Tommy Chan, Colin Coprani, Chul-Woo Kim, Mehrisadat Makki Alamdari. 2025-11-11. Output-only road roughness identification from vehicle axle accelerations through a universal smoothing method. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08839

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Admissible Fourier Lengths, KAM Reducibility, and Spectral Applications

We develop a perturbative KAM reducibility theory for one-frequency $\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{R})$ cocycles based on an admissible Fourier length $\ell$. The regularity relevant to the iteration is measured by positive adapted Fourier width rather than ordinary smoothness in the Euclidean length $|n|$. The same length governs Fourier decay, truncation and resonance scales, and the arithmetic condition controlling the small divisors. This framework contains the classical analytic and Gevrey settings, while non-monotone choices of $\ell$ allow classical nowhere differentiable Weierstrass-type perturbations and continuous perturbations outside every positive H\"older class. As spectral applications, we obtain purely absolutely continuous spectrum for every phase and $1/2$-H\"older continuity of the integrated density of states for the associated quasiperiodic Schr\"odinger operators. The Aubry dual has pure point spectrum for Lebesgue almost every dual phase, with eigenfunctions exponentially localized in the metric induced by $\ell$. We also construct nowhere differentiable quasiperiodic potentials with purely absolutely continuous Cantor spectrum.

math.DS

Dynamics inside the attracting basins of some skew products

Polynomial skew products in $\mathbb{C}^2$ are maps of the form $F(z,w)=(P(z),Q(z,w))$, where $P$ and $Q$ are polynomials. Their local dynamics have been widely investigated. In this paper, we study the global dynamics inside Fatou components of some skew products. We consider all the inverse images in a Fatou component of a given point and use the Kobayashi metric to measure the distance between points. In the cases we consider, there are always arbitrarily large Kobayashi balls in the complement of these inverse sets.

math.DS

Ergodicity of dynamical systems without uniqueness of orbits

Recently, there has been considerable interest in the study of non-deterministic dynamical systems. To analyze the chaotic behavior of such systems from a measure-theoretic viewpoint, it is desirable to consider ergodicity. However, the classical definition of ergodicity involves invariant sets, whose definition is not unique for non-deterministic dynamical systems. Thus, we are led to the question of which invariance yields an interesting definition of ergodicity. Here, we propose a definition based on the strong backward invariance and show that analogs of classical results hold. We also consider implications of the Birkhoff ergodic theorem for systems without uniqueness of orbits.

math.DS