Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Civil/Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering
Mahreen Nabi - Texas Southern University
Co-Author(s): Fengxiang Qiao and Lei Yu, Texas Southern University, Houston, TX
Motor vehicles which can be implied as one of the primary causes of air pollution in USA. The emissions resulted from the combustion of petroleum-based engines and fuel evaporation. According to US Environment Protection Agency (EPA), there is 2% increase in total emission from motor vehicles from 2012 to 2013, incorporating 27% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by transportation. The basic factors of vehicle emissions are related to vehicle properties, pavement condition, roadway geometry and specially driving behavior. With the unpredictable driving behavior, a series of acceleration and deceleration has been seen in driving pattern while changing and merging lane with through traffic in weaving section on a freeway. And also the vehicle tire contact friction which depends on pavement roughness has a major effect on vehicle speed that is directly related to the vehicular emission. The objective of this paper is to quantify and investigate the correlation between the vehicular emission and pavement roughness on the weaving area of freeways. The research work was conducted in three-steps: road test, data collection, and correlation analysis. A portable emission measurement system (PEMS) has been used to measure emissions during the actual use of an internal-combustion engine of a light-duty vehicle while driving in weaving segments in Texas, USA. The pavement roughness has been measured by using the International Roughness Index (IRI) data from a Smartphone app called Roadroid. The statistical analysis showed that, with the different pavement conditions, there are occurrences of speed variations, which impact vehicular emissions. Driving on the old and poor pavements resulted in an increase in CO2 emission and fuel consumption compared to the new pavements. With further studies, the findings of this research can contribute in developing maintenance countermeasures in the reduction of vehicular emissions associated with pavement roughness.
Not SubmittedFunder Acknowledgement(s): The authors acknowledge that this research is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under CREST program #1137732
Faculty Advisor: Fengxiang Qiao, qiao_fg@tsu.edu