Paper Contents
Abstract
Almost every urban centre, not only in India, but throughout the world is facing the problem of poor air quality. Air pollution due to vehicle exhaust is a significant contributor to overall air pollution. Through tailpipe, vehicles emit various harmful chemical compounds as a direct result of combustion process. Since vehicular emissions are ground level sources, they have direct impact on health of human being. Traffic jams, long queues on signalized intersections and poor road conditions affect the steady pattern of flow which results into higher fuel consumption and consequently high vehicular emissions are observed. Savings in fuel consumption and curbing the related emissions is need of the present hour. Deteriorated roads results in higher fuel consumption and are responsible for higher emissions, therefore appropriate maintenance of roads is among the potential methods to reduce vehicles emissions. In this study, a total of 5 alternatives including base case are created in the HDM- 4 software. Through base case, effect of road roughness and vehicular speed on emissions is estimated for vehicles cars and trucks. For cars, fuel consumption and emissions first increases, then decreases and finally increases on account of increase in roughness. This behavior of fuel consumption and emissions curve with respect to road roughness is explained in 3 zones. For trucks, fuel consumption and emissions always increases on account of increase in roughness. However rate of increase in fuel consumption and emissions is higher for higher values of roughness. Benefits of optimum maintenance and rehabilitation strategy for roads are evaluated in terms of savings in fuel consumption and reduction in vehicle emissions for the present study. Comparison of base case and optimum maintenance case for life term (20 years) yields savings of 4.4% in fuel consumption and 4.23% reductions in CO2 emissions.
Copyright
Copyright © 2024 Jitender Singh. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
