Hard pavement will save gas

Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers have developed a mathematical model of the top cover of the pavement and proposed saving 3% of fuel when traveling. This work is in the Transportation Research Record , and is available on the MIT website.

If hard surfaces can help reduce fuel consumption.

For modeling, the researchers used data from 5643 trips on the US transportation network. These figures provide information on highway overlays and road transport vehicles.

From the data they have created the mathematical model and the model analysis concludes: If the hard road surface (of special bitumen or concrete) can reduce the 3% of fuel consumption .

It saves fuel because it reduces the depth of the wheel pressed to the road surface. According to them, the settlement by the pressure even very small also forced the vehicle to go through the 'steep climb', leading to more fuel consumption. The effect is the same as pedestrians walking on the sand will feel more difficult to walk on the asphalt.

Since the mathematical model was built from the analysis of data for thousands of miles, the upper layer was covered with different materials, so the conclusion was very reliable.

According to the authors, the level of savings appears to be small (only 3%), but in the United States, it would be equivalent to 273 million barrels of crude oil per year, worth nearly $ 15.6 billion, the figure That's not small at all.