The new Volvo FH has been subjected to a range of gruelling quality tests. It has been cooled and heated. It has been shaken and thrown around. It has been driven for mile after mile in extreme environments. It has taken the punishment.

Developing an entirely new truck generation – in which all the components and technical solutions are new – imposed huge demands on quality tests. The focal point for many of the tests that were conducted on the new Volvo FH is customer needs.

Volvo Group Trucks AME: Southern Africa is launching the Euro 3 FH model at the Johannesburg Motor Show in October.

In this article we look at how the Volvo FH was tested in Europe to ensure it would meet customer requirements. In the next issue of Transport World Africa, we will find out how Volvo Group Trucks AME: Southern Africa conducted its test ensuring the truck meets Africa’s conditions.

European tests

Initially, individual components such as the chassis, cab and electrical system were tested separately. Once they were approved, it was time for the complete truck to be tested. This was done at both Volvo Trucks’ own laboratories in Sweden and the company’s proving grounds as well as in regular commercial traffic with field test haulier.

One of the many proving grounds that Volvo Trucks uses to test trucks is located in Kiruna in northern Sweden. During the winter of 2011/12, the lowest temperature recorded there was minus44°C and this ice-cold climate was perfect for testing how the new Volvo FH would behave in such extreme conditions.

Hans Johanzon was one of the test engineers and he made sure that all the drivers knew what was expected of them. “These tests are customer operationrelated. In other words, the test drivers use these vehicles in exactly the same way as they use their own trucks. They drive them, sometimes carry passengers, sleep in them and check them to make sure that they start in the morning, even after a freezing cold night,” he says.

Test period

During the test period, every truck was driven for at least 20 000 km in the freezing cold, where one of the greatest problems was that all the components in the truck – from the hardest material to the electrical system – became brittle. The challenge was to develop components that withstand these ice-cold conditions without failing.

Johanzon explains: “Making sure that the truck is able to withstand not only an extremely cold climate but also rapid changes in temperature is another quality challenge. So we normally drive from northern Scandinavia, where it can be 40 degrees below zero, to the Norwegian coast, where the climate is milder and humid and the temperature is often above zero. Twenty minutes later, we drive up into the mountains again, where the temperature drops once more.”

Tests of a different kind were conducted at the proving ground in Hällered near Gothenburg in Sweden. A large number of test drivers worked intensively to perform a series of very demanding accelerated endurance tests. This test regime corresponds to 10 years and 1 250 000 km out on the road. It includes demanding road conditions such as driving on hills with gradients between 10 and 20% and driving over a range of severe obstacles, such as potholes, washboards, Belgian pave, dips and water channels. The test procedures include other elements such as opening and closing the door over and over again.

One of the most rigorous parts of the accelerated endurance tests is driving the truck on durability track. Here, the truck is subjected to the same kind of obstacles it encounters in standard traffic situations, but in a much shorter time period. By driving round and round the track, which poses a wide range of challenging obstacles, the test is significantly accelerated.

An even more accelerated test was conducted at the Volvo Trucks’ shake rig laboratory, where the truck is shaken around the clock for between six and eight weeks. For a customer, this corresponds to driving more than a million kilometres.

Feedback

All feedback from the verification test is followed up to understand the cause of any failure and to find durable technical solutions.

The new solutions are then subjected to a new test and the procedure continues in this way until the specification for the component in question meets the requirements specified for it.

In order to also validate the product from the end-customer perspective Volvo Trucks also performed field tests.

Johanzon concludes: “This requires testing the new Volvo FH Series in commercial traffic. We have had almost 50 trucks placed with customers in Europe, Australia and Brazil. In this way, we are able to cover different operating conditions, types of transport, climates and driver behaviour.”

When the quality of a truck is tested, extreme situations are not the only important aspect. Volvo Trucks has a huge number of customers who operate in more “normal” driving conditions so the new truck has also been designed to suit them.