Work

An Integrated Physical–Mechanistic Model for Predicting Fuel Consumption on High-Category Roads: Incorporating Pavement Friction and Infrastructure Constraints

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Road transport fuel consumption is strongly affected by pavement conditions and road infrastructure, whereas conventional normative approaches primarily consider vehicle characteristics and operating conditions while neglecting pavement friction and infrastructure-induced driving cycles. This study develops and validates an integrated physical–mechanistic model for predicting actual fuel consumption on high-category roads by combining vehicle energy-balance equations with pavement diagnostic parameters and infrastructure constraints. Unlike existing mechanistic or empirical approaches, the proposed framework explicitly incorporates pavement friction as a quantitative indicator of both skid resistance and road-related energy losses, enabling the simultaneous assessment of traffic safety and fuel efficiency within a unified engineering model. The methodology was applied to the A-350 Almaty–Taldykorgan highway using telemetry from 150 independent vehicle-route observations, 840 complete corridor transits, approximately 4.8 million CAN-GPS records, and 340 pavement friction measurements. The results indicate that actual fuel consumption exceeded normative values by an average of 9.2%, while a reduction in pavement friction below the regulatory threshold was associated with a substantial increase in fuel consumption, further amplified by pedestrian crossings and urban road sections. Model calibration and independent validation demonstrated that the proposed model achieved strong predictive performance (R2 = 0.94; MAE = 1.8%) under the observed operating conditions. This study extends existing fuel consumption modeling by reinterpreting pavement friction as a dual-purpose engineering indicator for both safety assessment and energy-efficiency diagnostics. The proposed methodology provides a scientific basis for corridor-level pavement management and infrastructure-related fuel-efficiency assessment and provides a conceptual foundation for future integration into intelligent transportation systems, subject to broader multi-corridor and seasonal validation.

Source: Eng—Advances in Engineering

DOI: 10.3390/eng7080373