Sensitivity and Accuracy Assessment of Vehicle Weigh-in-Motion System Measurement Errors Using In-Pavement Strain-Based Sensors

Measuring the weights of passing vehicles at highway speed is an important activity of any intelligent transportation system. Weigh-in-motion (WIM) technology has various applications in highway management, infrastructure investment optimization, law enforcement, and pavement design. The measurement accuracy of a WIM is critically important for some WIM applications such as law enforcement, highway capacity analysis, and pavement design etc. Different from previous work, this study focuses on understanding the relationship between the accuracy of an in-pavement strain-sensor based WIM system and its external contributors such as humidity, temperature, wander behavior and wind speed, which the authors found unclear from literature search. Such research is very important for WIM quality assurance application successes. Since the accuracy of WIM data is highly dependent on many factors, such as temperature, vehicle speeds, precipitation, cross wind speeds, and the evenness of the road surface. In general there are about 0.97% anomalies in vehicle class and 6.42% anomalies in vehicle weight. With that error, a WIM system can underestimate about 90% of truck weights and the degree of underestimation can exceed 50% of the corresponding static weights. The objective of this study is to provide scientific evidences of the systematic sensitivity analysis on the influences of external contributors on the measurement accuracy of a WIM system based on in-pavement strain sensors. The main external contributors to be investigated in this study include air temperature, vehicle wander behavior, air humidity, and wind speed on the measurement accuracy of a WIM system.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Active
  • Funding: $282864
  • Contract Numbers:

    69A3551747108

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

    University Transportation Centers Program
    Department of Transportation
    Washington, DC  United States  20590
  • Managing Organizations:

    Mountain-Plains Consortium

    North Dakota State University
    Fargo, ND  United States  58108
  • Project Managers:

    Tolliver, Denver

  • Performing Organizations:

    Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute

    North Dakota State University
    1320 Albrecht Boulevard
    Fargo, ND  United States  581052
  • Principal Investigators:

    Lu, Pan

    Tolliver, Denver

  • Start Date: 20190416
  • Expected Completion Date: 20240731
  • Actual Completion Date: 0
  • USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program
  • Source Data: MPC-601

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01704399
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: Mountain-Plains Consortium
  • Contract Numbers: 69A3551747108
  • Files: UTC, RIP
  • Created Date: May 4 2019 8:18AM