DIMENSION AND MASS CHARACTERISATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN HEAVY VEHICLE FLEET (PERFORMANCE BASED STANDARDS: NRTC/AUSTROADS PROJECT A3 AND A4): WORKING PAPER

An analysis of the composition of the Australian heavy vehicle fleet was conducted by processing an extensive set of weigh-in-motion (WIM) data held by the state road authorities. The vehicle fleet was characterised into 24 classes, from rigid trucks to triple road trains, which accounted for 99 percent of the WIM data. Each of these vehicle classes was examined to locate the most frequent groups of vehicles based on the distributions of axle group spacings. Typical industries were assigned to each of the identified groups, and a set of 84 reference vehicles were specified. These reference vehicles are to be tested against the set of initial potential performance standards that have been defined in a separate report prepared under this contract. (a)