Risk Assessment of Rollover and Skidding due to Pavement Roughness and Differential Settlement for Enhancing Transportation Safety

Abstract

In this paper, a closed-loop simulation of vehicle dynamics in CarSim is utilized as surrogate measures to study the effect of pavement roughness and differential settlement on risk of vehicle rollover and skidding. It is found that the influence of pavement roughness on vehicle rollover is significant and the influence of pavement roughness on vehicle skidding is insignificant. The influence of pavement roughness of grade A and B on safety margin of vehicle rollover can be negligible. Pavement roughness of grade C and D significantly reduces the safety margin of vehicle rollover. A 5 cm settlement difference on pavement reduces the safety margin of vehicle skidding on a good road. When the settlement difference is 5 cm, the vehicle rollover and skidding are greatly affected by the lane-changing speed. It provides an effective and general method based on vehicle dynamics for studying transportation safety as well as for setting up criteria for pavement maintenance.