Impact of pavement rutting on vehicle safety: a closed-loop assessment method

Rutting can incline to severe traffic accidents under some adverse driving conditions (i.e. curve and rain). In this paper a closed-loop assessment method is proposed to study the impact of rutting on vehicle safety. Different from most existing studies concentrating on the interaction of vehicle and rutting, driver factors were considered in the controller-vehicle-rutting pavement system (CVRS) model. Simultaneously, road alignment, rutting geometry and road wet conditions were integrated to establish the rutting pavement model. Load transfer ratio (LTR) and sideslip index (SI) were used to analyse the risk of rollover and sideslip under representative rutting scenarios. The results reveal that closed-loop vehicle is more prone to rollover than open-loop vehicle when traversing rutting on the curved road. The open-loop assessment method underestimates the impact of rutting on the stability of lane-changing vehicles. This study has potential applications for not only pavement maintenance but also accident prevention.