Kakan Dey

A Review of Communication, Driver Characteristics, and Controls Aspects of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC)

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) systems have the potential to increase traffic throughput by allowing smaller headway between vehicles and moving vehicles safely in a platoon at a harmonized speed. CACC systems have been attracting significant attention from both academia and industry since connectivity between vehicles will become mandatory for new vehicles in the USA in the near future. In this paper, we review three basic and important aspects of CACC systems: communications, driver characteristics, and controls to identify the most challenging issues for their real-world deployment. Different routing protocols that support the data communication requirements between vehicles in the CACC platoon are reviewed. Promising and suitable protocols are identified. Driver characteristics related issues, such as how to keep drivers engaged in driving tasks during CACC operations, are discussed. To achieve mass acceptance, the control design needs to depict real-world traffic variability such as communication effects, driver behavior, and traffic composition. Thus, this paper also discusses the issues that existing CACC control modules face when considering close to ideal driving conditions.

Fault-Tree Model for Risk Assessment of Bridge Failure: Case Study for Segmental Box Girder Bridges

Over the past few decades, the design capacity and service condition of many bridges, which are vital components of the surface transportation infrastructure reliability and functionality, have been challenged by rapid traffic growth and scarce maintenance funds. Numerous incidents of bridge collapse call for an urgent need to develop a systematic method of assessing the failure risks and identifying the initiating events that can lead to a bridge collapse. This paper presents a process of bridge failure risk analysis through fault-tree modeling for a common type of bridge known as segmental concrete box girder bridge. The process was applied to a segmental box girder bridge in South Carolina and was found to effectively identify causal factors of bridge failure and estimate overall failure risk. However, to comprehensively assess the probability of bridge failure, fault-tree analysis can best be used in combination with current risk assessment methods, such as visual inspections and structural health monitoring sensors.

Potential of Intelligent Transportation Systems in Mitigating Adverse Weather Impacts on Road Mobility: A Review

Adverse weather conditions for roads, which cause transportation systems to perform far below capacity, can severely affect societys economic output. As elimination of road weather events is not possible, transportation agencies perform proactive and reactive maintenance activities to minimize adverse impacts to keep roadways in optimum condition. While reactive maintenance activities are conducted to clear roadways after the occurrence of extreme weather events, proactive activities minimize these impacts beforehand. The success of proactive activities solely depends on the availability of accurate road weather information, however. Traditional road weather forecasting techniques rely on governmental weather services, which are not appropriate to predict route-specific road weather conditions. In this paper, the authors reviewed current intelligent transportation systems (ITS)-based solutions for minimizing road weather impacts and possible ITS innovations to incorporate diverse data sources to improve road weather management activities. ITS-based initiatives, such as road weather information system (RWIS), allow transportation agencies obtain accurate road weather assessments. Location-specific infrastructures such as RWIS are cost prohibitive for system-wide deployments. Connected vehicles equipped with weather sensors could enhance mobile road weather data collection. This strategy could improve proactive maintenance programs and reduce adverse effects of weather to the surface transportation system.

Estimation of Pavement and Bridge Damage Costs Caused by Overweight Trucks

This study adopted a damage quantification framework to estimate bridge and pavement damage caused by overweight trucks. The framework was applied to estimate unit overweight truck damage costs for the highway system maintained by the South Carolina Department of Transportation. The analysis revealed that pavement and bridge damage increased significantly when trucks were above legal weight limits. Tradeoffs between the most common overweight truck fee types were estimated to examine their relative efficacy. The study found the axle-based damage cost recovery fee for the additional per trip damage cost above the legal weight limit for an overweight truck loaded up to the maximum overweight limit. The fee varied between

Review of State DOTs Policies for Overweight Truck Fees and Relevant Stakeholders’ Perspectives

14 and

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication in a heterogeneous wireless network – Performance evaluation

165 per trip, depending on the type of overweight truck. The flat damage cost recovery fee was

Intelligent Transportation Systems-A Frontier for Breaking Boundaries of Traditional Academic Engineering Disciplines [Education]

55 per trip for all overweight trucks (about two times the current flat damage fee in South Carolina). The study revealed that ignoring the axle distribution in the flat damage cost recovery fee caused some truck types to pay more and others to pay less than the actual damage they imparted. In a weight-based damage cost recovery fee system, the per trip damage cost recovery fee varied between

Infrastructure Damage-Cost-Recovery Fee for Overweight Trucks: Tradeoff Analysis Framework

2.77 and

Connectivity supported dynamic routing of electric vehicles in an inductively coupled power transfer environment

36.57 per ton; in a weight-distance-based damage cost recovery fee system, the damage fee varied between 2 and 14 cents per ton-mile. A comparative analysis between damage cost recovery fee types, such as the one presented in this paper, will provide insight to decision makers for setting policies regarding overweight trucking fees.

Rate of Deterioration of Bridges and Pavements as Affected by Trucks

AbstractOf all roadway vehicles, trucks inflict the greatest deterioration to pavements and bridges owing to their heavy gross weights and axle loads. States issue permits to trucks beyond legal weight limits and collect fees to compensate for additional damage. To study the extent to which state departments of transportation (DOTs) have allowed passage of overweight loads, the first objective of this paper was to characterize overweight load permit practices among all U.S. states, and the second objective was to identify stakeholders’ perspectives on how to modernize current overweight permit practices. Through an analysis of existing fee policies, this research has characterized the state of the practice in permit fees for overweight loads on public roadways, and evaluated these practices. The subsequent data showed a wide array of policies on overweight permitting, such that a single interstate overweight freight trip might encounter several diverse overweight permitting policies. Although the range of...