RRT-3 — Future Road Infrastructure for DART

This research team focuses on the design of road infrastructure for the implementation of DART concepts. The goal is to provide a feasible and prudent road and charging infrastructure from the perspectives of safety, comfort and efficiency at DART’s road sections, terminals, and stops.

Road Guidelines for DART Speeds and Passenger Ride Comfort

This research studies the interaction between passenger, vehicle and road infrastructures to establish guidelines for design and maintenance of road and pavement to provide a high level of passenger ride comfort. Various comprehensive experimental and numerical studies have been conducted to find the regression relationships between subjective factors like passenger perception and objective factors such as road condition, vehicle speeds and accelerations. Ride discomfort thresholds to evaluate passenger discomfort in a bus during road turns and a refined Bus Ride Index to evaluate bus lane roughness conditions have been proposed. The study provides guidelines for vehicle operating speeds, vehicle interior design and pavement maintenance strategies to improve passenger ride comfort.

Contact: Teron NGUYEN

Innovative Pavement System for an Uninterrupted DART Operation

TUMCREATE has developed an innovative Precast Ultra-Thin Whitetopping (PUTW) pavement system. PUTW is a cost effective and durable pavement system for maintenance of road infrastructure in Singapore. One of the advantages of PUTW is the fast construction characteristics. PUTW can be constructed in less than 8 hours as compared to 2 weeks taken by conventional cast-in-place concrete pavement. PUTW has flexibility to accommodate power supply modules to allow wireless energy transfer to electric vehicles (DART) when they are running on the pavement. PUTW offers quick installation and maintenance of road and charging infrastructure with minimum traffic delay.

Improvement of Functional Performance of Innovative Pavement for DART

PUTW offers great potential in structural performance of pavements for DART. Moreover, the functional performance is vital as it is directly related to safety and it needs to be further studied and improved. This study focuses on the safety aspects of the driving experience by improving the skid resistance and drainage capabilities on the pavement surface. Through a micromechanics design approach, laboratory experiments and numerical models, an innovative design was achieved. On top of that, the self-cleaning function for pavement application is investigated by incorporating Titanium dioxide which enables the photocatalytic action.

Contact: Ali Aryo BAWONO