The total yearly carbon footprint of European Union has been reduced by 24% between years 1990 and 2014. Unfortunately, this does not hold for the share of road freight transport sector, representing 20% from the total, which on contrary raised by 17% even though the European committee imposed stricter regulations on emissions of greenhouse gasses. One of the major drivers behind this trend is the growing demand for freight transport resulting from vertical disintegration, globalisation, and consumerism being nowadays strongly driven by e-commerce. To absorb the lion's share of the increasing transport demand on existing infrastructure and meet future CO2 targets a considerable improvement in the efficiency of the road transport is essential. This includes a better usage of current infrastructure while adopting ITS, hybridization and electrification of the powertrain, stimulation of synchromodality, and employment of novel vehicle combinations having higher capacity. This dissertation analyses the last one. High Capacity Vehicles (HCV), are vehicle combinations exceeding the length and weight limits prescribed by current European directives. Because of their increased size, these vehicle combinations are typically perceived inadequately by the public, which considers them as safety risk excessively damaging the infrastructure. In this dissertation the applicability of HCV under a new, performance-based, legislative framework is analysed considering safety, emissions, and profitability as performance criteria. The outcome of the analysis provides a solid benchmark between High Capacity Vehicles and currently used vehicle combinations with respect to all above-mentioned aspects. The results are showing the high potential of HCV, as an the enabler towards future societal and environmental challenges. Furthermore, the problematics of low-speed manoeuvring in both directions is studied, being generally difficult for every articulated vehicle. The results present not only a method how the manoeuvrability can be considerably enhanced by active steering of the trailing units, but also how the driver may be assisted during a bi-directional parking manoeuvre by a support framework. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting