Deployment of Portable WIM Systems at ATR Sites for Data Collection and Comparative Study

Project summary:

A new, portable, weigh-in-motion (WIM) system that can be used much like a pneumatic counter was successfully developed by the principal investigator of this project in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) Office of Transportation and Data Analysis (TDA). The objective of this project was to deploy and test the developed system from multiple existing automatic traffic recorder (ATR) locations as a follow-up study. MnDOT TDA allocated 17 sites (7 ATR sites and 10 sites from county roads in Chisago County); the actual data collection and analysis was contracted to a consulting firm. The research team fabricated sensor mats and built a WIM controller. The existing portable WIM system could only support up to 24 hours of data collection because of limited battery capacity. MnDOT TDA requested to extend the capacity to seven days by redesigning the power supply circuit to include an external port for a large, external battery pack. Therefore, the project built one more portable WIM system and expanded the battery capacity to seven days by redesigning the existing system. After the field data collection, the researchers expected to receive many inputs on installation methods, potential improvements associated with the software, hardware improvements, data quality, and unexpected problems, all of which were analyzed and incorporated into the next version designs. Upon completion of the project, MnDOT TDA took ownership of the finished, portable WIM system.