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<p>Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are rapidly transforming the transportation sector, offering increased safety, efficiency, and a significant decrease in congestion that would result from their large-scale implementation. Conversely, the road lane-centring technology in AVs forces these vehicles to repeatedly follow the same narrow pathways, leading to a concentration of stresses along specific wheel tracks on the road. This focused loading accelerates geotechnical defects and pavement substructure deterioration, especially when large AV freight platoons carrying heavy loads pass through. This research introduces the concept of pre-defining inter-vehicular wandering constraints between AVs to stagger the vehicles into various formation positions during platooning, thereby distributing the wheel loads evenly across the pavement lane width. Numerical modelling and laboratory experimental investigations carried out in this study examine how cyclic loads from AV freight convoys affect flexible road pavement substrata under various pre-defined staggering positions when AVs navigate at multiple speeds and axle load configurations. Findings reveal that implementing a small wandering constraint of even 0.05&#xa0;m between AVs can significantly reduce cumulative vertical stresses in pavements up to 54% compared to no provision for wandering, consequently reducing permanent deformations and delaying damage accumulation in road pavements to a great extent. Based on these insights, guidelines are specified for AV platooning at optimised inter-vehicular wandering offsets that can be integrated into platoon management systems and vehicle navigation algorithms to effectively distribute wheel loads across the pavement lane width, thereby mitigating the unique challenges posed by lane-centred AV traffic on flexible road pavements.</p>

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Wandering constraints in autonomous vehicle platoons to safeguard flexible pavements

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月16日

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  • Pankaj Bariker,
  • M. Roshan Khan,
  • Robert Arcos

摘要

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are rapidly transforming the transportation sector, offering increased safety, efficiency, and a significant decrease in congestion that would result from their large-scale implementation. Conversely, the road lane-centring technology in AVs forces these vehicles to repeatedly follow the same narrow pathways, leading to a concentration of stresses along specific wheel tracks on the road. This focused loading accelerates geotechnical defects and pavement substructure deterioration, especially when large AV freight platoons carrying heavy loads pass through. This research introduces the concept of pre-defining inter-vehicular wandering constraints between AVs to stagger the vehicles into various formation positions during platooning, thereby distributing the wheel loads evenly across the pavement lane width. Numerical modelling and laboratory experimental investigations carried out in this study examine how cyclic loads from AV freight convoys affect flexible road pavement substrata under various pre-defined staggering positions when AVs navigate at multiple speeds and axle load configurations. Findings reveal that implementing a small wandering constraint of even 0.05 m between AVs can significantly reduce cumulative vertical stresses in pavements up to 54% compared to no provision for wandering, consequently reducing permanent deformations and delaying damage accumulation in road pavements to a great extent. Based on these insights, guidelines are specified for AV platooning at optimised inter-vehicular wandering offsets that can be integrated into platoon management systems and vehicle navigation algorithms to effectively distribute wheel loads across the pavement lane width, thereby mitigating the unique challenges posed by lane-centred AV traffic on flexible road pavements.