Abstract
The effect of adverse weather conditions on the safety of vehicles moving on different types of roads and measuring its margin of safety have always been a major research issue of highways. Determining the exact value of friction coefficient between the wheels of the vehicle and the surface of the pavement (usually Asphalt Concrete) in different weather conditions is assumed as a major factor in design process. An appropriate method is analyzing the dynamic motion of the vehicle and its interactions with geometrical elements of road using dynamic simulation of vehicles. In this paper the effect of changes of friction coefficient caused by the weather conditions on the dynamic responses of three types of vehicles: including Sedan, Bus, and Truck based on the results of Adams/car Simulator are investigated. The studies conducted on this issue for different weather conditions suggest values ranging from 0.04 to 1.25. The results obtained from simulation based on Adams/car represent that the friction coefficient in values of 0.9, 0.8, 0.7, 0.6 do not effect on braking distance significantly and it is possible to attribute them all to dry weather condition. However, as it was anticipated the values of 0.5, 0.4, 0.28 and 0.18 have significant differences in braking distance. Hence, the values of 0.5, 0.4, 0.28 and 0.18 can be attributed to wet, rainy, snowy and icy conditions respectively.
Highlights
The effect of undesirable road conditions on the safety of current vehicles on different types of roads is constantly considered as a major subject in Transportation engineering in all over the world
There are 48 tests altogether in order to obtain the values of Braking Distance, different values of 0.18, 0.28, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 are entered in the simulation environment, and to define each of them to a specific weather condition and a specific road condition, according to previous studies (Table 3), are named respectively for Icy, Snowy, Rainy, Wet, Dry, Dry-2, Dry-3
The results obtained from simulation based on Adams/car indicate that friction coefficients of 0.9, 0.8, 0.7and 0.6 do not have intensively significant differences in the values of braking distance and all of them can be attributed to dry weather condition
Summary
The effect of undesirable road conditions on the safety of current vehicles on different types of roads is constantly considered as a major subject in Transportation engineering in all over the world. The statistics of fatality represent that winter, as the most adverse weather condition, can it have significant effect on road surface, and is considered as a major factor where transportation and weather condition are interconnected, this means, Geometric Design and Road Safety, Figures 1 and 2 show the number of fatality of accidents in the US between 2009 and 2010 clearly [1]. In this paper, according to neglect the effect of weather conditions on the road surface and the change in the interaction between the vehicle and the road and effect of the type of vehicle (weight, dynamic conditions), the codes valid geometric design, to simulate and present a model for estimating the effect of the mentioned factors on braking distance. In order to investigate the interaction between road and vehicle on each other precisely, Adams/car is used
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