Road shells’
For development work, and particularly for NVH development, it is sometimes desirable to have a simulated road surface attached to the rolls. Usually the required surface is a simulation of quite coarse stoned asphalt; but a roughened roll surface greatly increases the windage noise of the rig itself.
Road shell design and manufacture is difficult. The shells should ideally be made up of four or more segments of differing lengths and with junction gaps that are as small as possible and cut helically. It is rarely required to induce low frequency vibrations in the test vehicle; if it is required, it should be generated by randomly distributed variations in roll surface height to avoid possible resonances in the vehicle suspension.
The most usual techniques for producing road surfaces for attachment to chassis dynamometer rolls are as follows: