Ride comfort for passengers remains a pressing topic. The level of comfort in a vehicle can influences passengers’ preferences for a particular means of transport. The article aims to evaluate the influence of changes in suspension parameters on the ride comfort for passengers. The theoretical background includes a description of the applied method for a creating the virtual model of an investigated vehicle as well as the method of evaluating the ride comfort. The ride comfort of the vehicle is assessed based on the standard method, which involves calculating the mean comfort method, i.e., ride comfort index N_MV in chosen points on a body floor. The N_MV ride comfort index (Mean Comfort Standard Method) requires the input of acceleration signals in three directions. The rest of the article offers the results of simulation computations. The stiffness–damping parameters of the primary and secondary suspension systems were changed at three levels and the vehicle was run on the real track section. The ride index N_MV was calculated for all three modifications of the suspension system in the chosen fifteen points of the body floor. It was found that lower values in the stiffness of the secondary suspension system lead to lower levels of ride comfort in the investigated railway passenger car; however, lower values in the stiffness–damping parameters of the primary suspension system did not decrease the levels of ride comfort as significantly.

One of the requirements concerning pavement quality is the evenness of its surface. Pavement unevenness has a random character and has an adverse influence to rolling resistance, tyre–pavement coherence, safety and the driving comfort. Knowledge of “longitudinal unevenness” has been long recognized as an important criteria of road performance, not only for safety by causing vehicle vibrations and affecting ride comfort but also as a major factor in pavement deterioration and working conditions of vehicles. The paper presents two original devices for the measurement of pavement longitudinal unevenness designed as a reaction to results and experiences gathered from a few years’ research activities, measurements and evaluations of road pavement evenness carried out in the authors' work place (University of Žilina – UNIZA). The first equipment has been designed as a single-wheel trailing vehicle and has been constructed on the Double-mass Measuring Set (DMS) principle and it is referred to as UNIZA single-wheel vehicle JP VSDS. The main reason for designing the device were authors’ findings that the reference quarter car model (used for calculation of International Roughness Index – IRI) can provide evaluation, which can be in contradiction with ride safety. This fact is determined by overvaluation of the short wavelengths and undervaluation the longer wavelengths by reference model. The second one is a profiler with very high resolution of surface scanning using mathematical models for unevenness evaluation. The device is referred to as Dynamic Road Scanner (DRS). The reason for designing of this equipment was in the first place insufficient repeatability of transversal unevenness measurements of device used by Slovak Road Administration, but for the purpose of correctness and measurements accuracy verifying were also results of longitudinal unevenness measurements compared. The paper presents results of evaluation by international established dynamic quantifiers of longitudinal unevenness based on measurements performed by these devices on three selected road sections in Slovakia. In the next part of the paper are compared IRI values obtained by mathematical calculations using reference quarter car model “driving” on road section profile measured by geodetic survey with IRI values obtained by conversion of the unevenness degree C (measured by UNIZA single-wheel vehicle JP VSDS) and IRI values measured by profilometer DRS. Keyword : pavement, longitudinal evenness, stationary stochastic process, power spectral density, single-wheel vehicle, dynamic response, acceleration, international roughness index, surface scanning This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Blast events and scenarios, as known, represent extreme phenomena that may result in catastrophic consequences, both for humans and structures. Accordingly, for engineering applications, the reliable description of expected blast waves is a crucial step of the overall design process. Compared to ideal theoretical formulations, however, real explosive events can be strongly sensitive to a multitude of parameters and first of all to the basic features (size, type, shape, etc.) of the charge. In this regard, several advanced computer codes can be used in support of design and research developments. Besides, the input parameters and solving assumptions of refined numerical methods are often available and calibrated in the literature for specific configurations only. In this paper, with the support of the ANSYS Autodyn program, special care is dedicated to the numerical analysis of the blast wave propagation in the air due to several charges. Five different explosives are taken into account in this study, including RDX, DAP‐2, DAP‐E, Polonit‐V, and homemade ANFO. The effects of different mixtures are thus emphasized in terms of the predicted blast wave, as a function of a given control point, direction, explosive mass, and composition. As shown, relatively scattered peak pressure estimates are collected for a given explosive. Comparative results are hence proposed towards selected experimental data of the literature, as well as based on simple analytical predictions. The collected overpressure peak values are thus discussed for the selected explosive charges.

Problems of fatigue life prediction of materials and structures are discussed in the paper. Service loading is assumed as a continuous loading process with possible discontinuous events, which are caused by various operating conditions. The damage in a material is due to a cumulative degradation process. The damaging process is then represented either by rain-flow matrices or by a fatigue damage function which is derived using some hypothesis of a fatigue failure criterion. Presented theoretical procedure enables a very effective estimation of a service life and/or reliable evaluation of residual life of any structures under various types of loading and environmental conditions. This approach creates a good basis for powerful expert systems in structural and mechanical engineering. The aim of the paper is to present briefly some results of analysis of load-bearing steel structure loads of special railway crane PKP 25/20i which was utilized in some specific ad relatively hard operating conditions. Virtual models of the structure were being used in an analysis of acting working dynamics loads influence to be able to forecast fatigue life of load-bearing of the crane jib.