Abstract

The main objective of ROSANNE is the harmonisation and standardisation of the measurement of skid resistance, noise emission and rolling resistance of road pavements. Regarding rolling resistance characterisation, a draft for standardization of a harmonized procedure for classification of road surfaces across Europe has been prepared within WP3 (deliverable 3.5). The procedure deals with the direct measurement on real roads of the rolling resistance coefficient of a free‐rolling test tyre, mounted on a towed trailer or a self‐propelled vehicle. In order to assess the proposed procedure, an experimental validation was organized in September 2015, and performed as a “Round Robin Test” (RRT) in which 5 test trailers were compared when using the draft standard method. The test program was implemented in Nantes (France), taking benefit of the IFSTTAR’s reference test track, an outdoor facility offering 12 different road surfaces of various texture characteristics, that can be tested in laboratory conditions (no traffic disturbance, road sections in ideal maintenance, a great number of data available). It was completed by tests on a trafficked road circuit in the vicinity, in order to check the applicability of the procedure in realistic road conditions, and its sensitivity to road characteristics not available on the test track (unevenness, slopes). Furthermore, trailer‐based direct measurements of rolling resistance coefficients were compared with alternative indirect measurement methods: coast‐down method and measurements of fuel consumption. The report describes the experimental test programme and provides the results and the analysis of the RRT. The results showed that the proposed methodology is clear enough to be applied without ambiguity. This explains why the correlation between rolling resistance and different surface descriptors varied in quality. However the progress made in a better control of measurement quality is real since previous projects. The correlation between rolling resistance and the MPD texture descriptor and the megatexture indicator LMe is generally good and can be improved by using filtering procedures to calculate the texture profile enveloped by the tyre. The huge amount of data collected during the experiment will be of interest for further developments far beyond the ROSANNE project. The energy‐method showed surprisingly good comparability to the coast‐downs tests and the method seems promising.

Authors (12)