Road safety assessment in curves based on a road embedded tire to road friction sensor

Abstract

Road safety relies mostly on available tire to road grip regarding to the forces required by a vehicle in a given dynamic situation. For example safety issues can occur when deceleration required forces exceeding the tire/road grip potential. Issues are much critical while traveling in a curve with a coupled longitudinal/transverse grip demand. Instrumented vehicles can be used in order to evaluate the available tire to road grip in rolling situations, but it remains linked to a dedicated vehicle and models have to be use to extrapolate these evaluations to various vehicles. The aim of this work is to propose a sensor embedded in the road infrastructure to evaluate the longitudinal and transverse grip demand of any traveling vehicle. A 6 axis sensor is embedded in a road test track, under a piece of the real road upper layer. Measurement are made at a acquisition rate of 2500 Hz and forces measuring ranges are of 2500 daN (vertical axis) and 750 daN (tangential). Measurements are compared to on-board measurement with a vehicle instrumented with dynamometric wheels. Three situations are experienced in a 100 meters curve: traveling at a given speed and traveling while accelerating or braking moderately, and for three vehicle speeds of 40, 60 and 80 km/h. Force evaluation from the two systems are differing of only 5% for the vertical force and 10% for the tangential forces. The differences are lower for the higher grip demands. For example moderate braking from 70 km/h in curve lead to 0.23 and 0.25 longitudinal friction coefficients (LFC) for road sensor and dynamometric wheel, and to 0.17 and 0.19 transversal friction coefficients (TFC). In perspectives, evaluations of an excessive grip demand could result in solutions as lowering the designed speed or improving the road surface layer.