Probe Vehicles Used to Measure Road Ride Quality: Pilot Demonstration

Abstract

New vehicle technology is leading to efficient methods for assessing the condition of the National Highway System. The use of simple sensors such as accelerometers, installed in vehicles, could provide a cost-effective way to assess ride quality for pavement management. A pilot study compared data gathered from accelerometers with the current state-of-the-art practices for measuring ride quality. After a review of relevant previous studies involving probe vehicles, this study assessed the use of probe vehicles’ acceleration measurements to evaluate the pavement profile. The repeatability of acceleration measurements with cross-correlation and standard deviation was obtained. With visual methods and the coherence function, acceleration measurements were compared with profile measurements obtained from inertial profilers. The literature review reinforced the view that using probe vehicles for pavement condition data collection would be promising and that measuring pavement condition with typical onboard sensors could provide a cost-effective way to collect data for pavement management. Probe vehicles are most practically used in pavement management applications to describe ride quality by using vehicle accelerometers and the Global Positioning System. The pilot study confirmed that the acceleration runs were repeatable. Visual inspection of the acceleration and profile plots suggested that the acceleration profiles and smoothness measurements were similar. Analysis with the coherence function also confirmed this strong relationship. The tested methodology provides a practical way to evaluate smoothness while providing a wider base of coverage compared with that of inertial profilers.