Verification of Pavement Structures and Deflection Effects on Vehicle Fuel Economy and GHG Emission

Project summary:

A pavement's effect on vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions has been studied for many years. Models for pavement roughness and texture have been developed, validated, and generally accepted. However, the effect of pavement deflection on fuel economy has been researched with several models, but no consensus on the mechanisms or their significance has been reached. In the last few years, more work has been done in this area, including a National Cooperative Highway Research Program study to calibrate the HDM4 roughness and texture models, development of a model by the Swedish, and work done by MIT to model tire-pavement deflection in asphalt pavements.

To resolve the questions about the various models for tire-pavement deflection, CalTRANS has funded the University of California-Davis to validate and calibrate models for vehicle energy consumption due to pavement deflection for use in pavement management and design.