01365924

Component

A non-intrusive method for periodically recording the location and mass of an in-service heavy vehicle using on-board systems was devised, tested and improved. The method was deployed on commercially operating buses in Victoria, Australia, for a period of 12 months. The purpose was to gain insight into the typical ranges of in-service front and rear axle loads as they varied throughout the day, and to test the appropriateness of existing legal axle load limits relative to actual daily loading. While traditional infrastructure-based Weigh-In-Motion systems collect vehicle weight data for many different anonymous vehicles at a fixed point on a transport network, for this purpose it was desirable to collect vehicle weight data for a small number of specific vehicles at any time during their travel, wherever they may have gone on the transport network. This necessitated the use of a vehicle-based system. A bus is an interesting subject for this method of data collection because its mass can change frequently during a journey and is often unknown. On-board electronic weighing systems are designed to accurately indicate static weight only under controlled conditions. Application of such a system to a commercially operating vehicle at any time during travel presented measurement accuracy challenges that were overcome during this project through the use of basic data processing algorithms to remove unwanted variations and spikes in the data. The end result was a procedure of sufficient accuracy to enable a policy decision to be made about the regulation of bus mass in Victoria.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AT055 Truck Size and Weight

01362476

12-0256

English

9p

2012

Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References

Axle loads; Data collection; Heavy vehicles; Location; Mass; Recording; Regulation; Vehicle electronics

Victoria (Australia)

Highways; Vehicles and Equipment; I90: Vehicles

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2012 Paper #12-0256

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2012 4:53PM