Coordination for heavy-duty vehicle platoon formation considering travel time variance

• Forming a platoon has the potential to reduce the overall drag, providing economic and ecological benefitssuch as reduced energy consumption, increased safety and a more efficient utilization of roadinfrastructure. Previous research on platoon coordination has mainly focused on local control of platoonformation at highway on‐ramps and off‐ramps, or large‐network coordination strategy based on real‐timevehicle‐to‐vehicle communication. The platoon scheduling problem, however, has been barely explored.This study investigates the optimization of platoon scheduling problem, which is defined as theminimization of the total cost of all vehicles, including travel cost, early or late penalty and fuelconsumption. The travel cost is modelled as driver wage of certain travel time, which is comprised ofrecurrent travel time and non‐recurrent delay. Non‐recurrent delay is a random variable independent ofdeparture time. If the actual arrival time is earlier than the preferred arrival time, an early penalty isincurred. Otherwise a late penalty, which has a greater weight coefficient than early penalty, is incurred.Fuel consumption is a nonlinear function of travel time and platooning state. All vehicles in the platoonexcept the leader will experience an air‐drag reduction. The fuel cost caused by air drag only composes partof the total fuel consumption, from the perspective of energy conservation. For this nonlinear stochasticprogramming problem, a solution is proposed for the platoon‐or‐not‐platoon dilemma. Moreover, theoptimal departure time of the platoon is given when it is more beneficial to form a platoon than drivingindividually. Several numerical examples are presented to study the influences of different unit costparameters, together with various assumptions of the distribution of non‐recurrent delay, on the optimaldeparture time. The model enables the operator to predict the expected cost of platooning and scheduleadjustment and make a reasonable decision.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Transportteknik och logistik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Transport Systems and Logistics (hsv//eng)

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