Analysis of the lateral slope’s impact on the calculation of water-filled rut depth

Accurate calculation of the water-filled rut depth is critical for assessing hydroplaning potential. Nevertheless, due to the difficulty in collecting and calculating the water-filled rut depth, most transportation agencies do not use i, especially in the case of lateral slopes, although water-filled rut depth is a key parameter that impacts driving safety. Contributions of this paper are development of a methodology to reliably compute the water-filled rut depth and quantitatively evaluate the influence of lateral slope on the water-filled rut depth. The proposed method include: 1) acquisition of the high-resolution 3D point cloud data of rut, 2) smooth processing of rut profile through moving average method with Matlab programming, 3) water-filled rut depth computation at different lateral slopes with the assistance of key points based on rut sections. With the variation of water-filled rut depth (ΔWD), its change rate (δWD), and the calculation error between the rut depth and the water-filled rut depth (Δ(n)) as evaluation indexes, the variation law of water-filled rut depth under different lateral slopes is analyzed when considering the severity level and rut shape of the rut profile. Results show that: 1) the increase in lateral slope leads to the reduction of water-filled rut depth; 2) the water-filled rut depth is affected by the rut shape, including rut side wall’s slope and the key points’ elevation. The accurate calculation of the water-filled rut depth can provide reliable suggestions for safe driving.