A Field Investigation of the Effect of Pavement Type on Fuel Consumption

Fuel consumption costs are influenced by vehicle technology, pavement condition, roadway geometrics, environment, speed, and other factors. The goal of this paper is to investigate the effect of pavement type on fuel consumption. The study has entailed the use of five instrumented vehicles to make fuel consumption measurements over different concrete (PCC) and asphalt (AC) pavement sections. The sections selected have similar characteristics (grade, roughness and texture) and differ only in the type of pavement. The data was collected at three different speeds. The results showed that the difference in fuel consumption between asphalt and concrete pavements is statistically significant at 95 percent confidence level for (loaded) light and heavy trucks at low speed (56 km/h) and summer conditions. Under these conditions, trucks driven over AC pavements will consume about 4% more than if they were driven over PCC pavements. Fuel consumption data for heavy truck in winter was not available. The analysis also showed that the mean differences of fuel consumption between asphalt and concrete pavements for passenger car, van and SUV are statistically not significant for both winter and summer conditions.