Transportation

The Transportation Research Area focuses on two aspects of the transportation sector – electrified transportation infrastructure and electrified transportation systems.

The Transportation Research Area supports vehicle network and transportation systems modeling, control and integration systems modeling, and control and integration of wireless and wired charging into the infrastructure in an affordable, constructible, maintainable, resilient, and sustainable manner. Fundamental developments in these areas are critical to all the enabling technologies and engineered systems.

The main challenge for pavement integration is in finding practical solutions that can be readily adopted by industry, public agencies, and stakeholders. As yet, little basic or applied research has been focused on integrating wireless charging, cooling, and connectivity into pavements. Economical approaches and durability are also areas that must be addressed in order to move technological advances into testbed, pilot, and practical applications. The longterm interaction of these units with pavement and vehicles, especially vehicles in motion, during their life cycle needs to be investigated and sound solutions engineered. Implications of ubiquitous charging on driver behavior and transportation systems modeling and control is also a completely new field that requires investigation.

Electrified transportation infrastructure research is primarily conducted in the Electrified Roadways Project. The design of electrified roadways with pavement embedded dynamic and semi-dynamic wireless charging capability requires co-optimization of electrical, electromagnetic, thermal, structural, cyber-physical, and economic aspects of the system. The advancements achieved in year two helped pave the way for more durable, maintainable, and cost-effective pavement structures with embedded wireless charging capability able to serve a wide range of vehicles.