Road test is hitherto the most common approach to assess vehicle durability and structural performance. Moreover, the measurements serve as the final validation of the road load simulation, which is currently widely used in vehicle development cycles. The virtual simulation requires digitized road surfaces, a suitable tire model, and suspension model. The whole procedure is time consuming for outdoor measurements and costly to automotive OEMs for road modeling, tire model parametrization, and so on. However, the simulation error of each subsystem model keeps uncertain, which brings troubles to the final analysis of the whole vehicle simulation. Meanwhile, quantitative evaluation of the simulation quality is always tough to conduct due to variability of measurements and limited test configurations.

To overcome such challenges, a new approach with higher operational feasibility for the acquisition of durability loads at wheel rim was proposed. Eight curved tracks with Belgian blocks from real paving were molded and mounted on the surface of a tire roller drum test rig. Rim forces were experimentally detected by a six-component force transducer when tire rolling over these tracks. The geometric surface of each track was determined with an optical 3D scanner and then digitally processed. A validated rigid ring tire model combined with a tandem-cam enveloping model was applied for the simulation. With the level cross counting, test and simulation results were compared in amplitude range, The step size of simulation was at the end analytically discussed. This article presents an effective measurement of rim forces under stochastic road excitation and a practical approach for the virtual load acquisition.