Paving the way to improved truck fuel efficiency

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improving fuel efficiency are much-sought-after goals in the commercial-vehicle industry. Various methods have been proposed to achieve these objectives - often centered around advanced technology on the truck itself - but researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) focused their attention to what's beneath the vehicle: the road surface.

The weight of heavy-duty trucks and buses causes a slight deflection in the road surface that leads to efficiency loss. A recent study by MIT postdoc Hessam Azarijafari, research scientist Jeremy Gregory, and principal research scientist in the Materials Research Laboratory Randolph Kirchain, theorizes that changes in road resurfacing practices could alleviate that inefficiency and potentially eliminate a half-percent of the total GHG emissions from the transportation sector in the process.