The impact of wind turbine traffic on highways in Texas, USA

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology for assessing the damage imposed by the movement of wind turbine components on Texas's highway infrastructure. The damage to the pavement structure was estimated using three primary distress mechanisms – rutting, longitudinal and alligator cracking – and also roughness. The extent of the damage to the pavement structure was evaluated using the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). The methodology adopted involved calculating the pavement distress due to the combined effect of the wind turbine and the design traffic relative to that due to the design traffic only. This ensures that biases in the distress predictions obtained from the MEPDG will mutually cancel each other out in each of the two scenarios. It was observed that the pavement damage in the case of Interstate and US highway sections was roughly 0·3% and 4% higher, respectively, irrespective of the distress mechanism. However, the pavement damage due to wind turbine truck traffic on state highways had a more serious impact than in the higher functional classes. The additional damage imposed by the wind turbine truck traffic will translate into a reduction in pavement service life that is estimated at 9%.