Use of Connected Vehicles to Characterize Ride Quality
Author/Creator
Bridgelall, Raj
Rahman, Md Tahmidur
Tolliver, Denver D.
Daleiden, Jerome F.
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Show full item recordAbstract
The United States rely on the performance of more than four million miles of roadways to
sustain its economic growth and to support the dynamic mobility needs of its growing
population. The funding gap to build and maintain roadways is ever widening. Hence, the
continuous deterioration of roads from weathering and usage poses significant challenges.
Transportation agencies measure ride quality as the primary indicator of roadway performance.
The international roughness index is the prevalent measure of ride quality that agencies use to
assess and forecast maintenance needs. Most jurisdictions utilize a laser-based inertial profiler to
produce the index. However, technical, practical, and budget constraints preclude their use for
some facilities, particularly local and unpaved roads that make up more than 90% of the road
network in the US. This study expands on previous work that developed a method to transform
sensor data from many connected vehicles to characterize ride quality continuously, for all
facility types, and at any speed. The case studies used a certified and calibrated inertial profiler to
produce the international roughness index. A smartphone aboard the inertial profiler produced
simultaneously the roughness index of the connected vehicle method. The results validate the
direct proportionality relationship between the inertial profiler and connected vehicle methods
within a margin-of-error that diminished below 5% and 2% after 30 and 80 traversal samples,
respectively.