U.S. military forces today are deployed globally and rapidly, often in areas with little infrastructure. Weighing vehicles and other cargo before loading them onto aircraft in a theater of operations is critical to this deployment. Each location requires specifically recalculating the cargo's weight and center of balance and taking into account the effects of altitude, temperature, runway length, and aircraft type. The current process for accomplishing this, when an in-ground fixed weigh scale is not available, is time-consuming, exhausting, and prone to error, especially in adverse weather. In the early 1990s, the U.S. Air Force commissioned the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to develop a portable weigh-in-motion (WIM) system for military deployment. The WIM system improves the weighing process by reducing personnel hours and the time required for deployment and by eliminating opportunities for human errors from the manual transfer of data or from the miscalculation of vehicle attributes. The ORNL is currently enhancing the portable WIM system with a new algorithm for accuracy of weighing, along with upgraded electronics, modifications for field use, interfaces to the databases for military deployment, and a capability to identify automatically the vehicle or cargo being weighed. The system can go anywhere via aircraft and be set up (by two soldiers) and operating in a few minutes. The WIM system may also have applicability in response to the National Transportation Safety Board's February 2004 recommendation that federal regulators and airlines develop methods to weigh passengers and baggage to prevent overloading of airplanes.
Abstract