Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) Configuration and Data Management Activities
- ORNL
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) involvement in the Weigh-in-Motion (WIM) research with both government agencies and private companies dates back to 1989. The discussion here will focus on the US Army's current need for an automated WIM system to weigh and determine the center-of-balance for military wheeled vehicles and cargo and the expanded uses of WIM data. ORNL is addressing configuration and data management issues as they relate to deployments for both military and humanitarian activities. The transition from the previous WIM Gen I to the current Gen II system illustrates a configuration and data management solution that ensures data integration, integrity, coherence and cost effectiveness. Currently, Army units use portable and fixed scales, tape measures, and calculators to determine vehicle axle, total weights and center of balance for vehicles prior to being transshipped via railcar, ship, or airlifted. Manually weighing and measuring all vehicles subject to these transshipment operations is time-consuming, labor-intensive, hazardous and is prone to human errors (e.g., misreading scales and tape measures, calculating centers of balance and wheel, axle, and vehicle weights, recording data, and transferring data from manually prepared work sheets into an electronic data base and aggravated by adverse weather conditions). Additionally, in the context of the military, the timeliness, safety, success, and effectiveness of airborne heavy-drop operations can be significantly improved by the use of an automated system to weigh and determine center of balance of vehicles while they are in motion. The lack of a standardized airlift-weighing system for joint service use also creates redundant weighing requirements at the cost of scarce resources and time. This case study can be judiciously expanded into commercial operations related to safety and enforcement. The WIM program will provide a means for the Army to automatically identify/weigh and monitor vehicle characteristics for real-time storage/dissemination to the TC-AIMS II (Transportation Coordinators' - Automated Information for Movement System II) for load planning and for providing asset visibility. The WIM system was developed using COTs products and the Reach Back (WIM-RBC) capability is based on a Web-services architecture implemented through best practices of software design (UML and XML schema). Fielded systems and XML-compliant messages can engage the WIM-RBC to store all measurement data in the repository accessible to authorized users through standard secure protocols.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). National Transportation Research Center (NTRC)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Work for Others (WFO)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 930833
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: North American Travel Monitoring Exhibition & Conference, Minneapolis, MN, MN, USA, 20060604, 20060607
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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