Research and Development on Noise, Vibration, and Harshness of Road Vehicles Using Driving Simulators—A Review

Noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) is a key aspect in the vehicle development. Reducing noise and vibration to create a comfortable environment is one of the main objectives in vehicle design. In the literature, many theoretical and experimental methods have been presented for improving the NVH performances of vehicles. However, in the great majority of situations, physical prototypes are still required as NVH is highly dependent on subjective human perception and a pure computational approach often does not suffice. In this article, driving simulators are discussed as a tool to reduce the need of physical prototypes allowing a reduction in development time while providing a deep understanding of vehicle NVH characteristics. The present article provides a review of the current development of driving simulator focused on problems, challenges, and solutions for NVH applications. Starting from the definition of the human response to noise and vibration, this article describes the different driving simulator technologies to tackle all the involved perception aspects. The different available technologies are discussed and compared as to provide design engineers with a complete picture of the current possibilities and future trends.