Validation metric based on relative error

Abstract

Engineers and scientists are often faced with the problem of objectively comparing time histories of measured and/or simulated data. This article presents a reliable and intuitive validation metric for use in the validation process. The proposed validation metric is able to quantify the agreement/disagreement between deterministic system response quantities of interest obtained from measurements on a physical system and predictions from a mathematical model. The validation metric is based on the relative error, and the challenges concerning the use of the relative error on periodic signals are addressed. The validation metric is compared to similar metrics and their advantages and limitations are discussed. The results show that the proposed validation metric gives a comprehensive error that is able to quantify the agreement between two periodic signals and is easily interpretable.