Friction-induced vibrations and noise are an issue of increasing relevance in the automotive sector as interior sound levels have diminished in recent years. Especially, stick-slip vibrations between surfaces in relative tangential motion is a topic of high interest. We present a meth-odology for measuring and evaluating the displacements between two component surfaces at relevant contact locations in vehicles with piezoelectric acceleration sensors. The method is exemplified for the automotive door and side frame relative motion in the ceiling area. By means of a comparison with laser triangulation sensors we show that the displacements are in the sub-millimeter range in this area. Based on the knowledge on the actual relative displace-ments at the door sealing system the relative motions are reproducibly simulated on a laboratory test setup. Level-scaling and spectral filtering are used to examine their influence on fric-tion-induced vibrations of a characteristic component pair. It is shown that downscaling of the displacement level and, therefore, lower relative velocity between the components, leads to more stick-slip vibrations and louder noise.
