Illinois
Accelerated Transportation Loading System
In 2000, the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign acquired the Accelerated Transportation Loading System (ATLAS) through state funding. The $2 million investment evaluates full-scale transportation systems by subjecting them to real-life traffic and environmental conditions. The system is capable of simulating aircraft, truck or rail traffic distributions, testing all types of pavement systems and applying load levels exceeding highway and airfield limits.
The system transmits loads to the pavement structure through a hydraulic ram attached to a wheel carriage. This can accommodate single, dual or aircraft tires or even a single-axle rail bogey. The load level varies between 0 and 80 kips.
Its adaptions include a portable structure that allows control of daily temperature changes on the pavement section. The facility also has readily available data acquisition systems for collecting both static and dynamic data from instrumented pavement sections.
ATLAS’ total testing length is 85 feet, with 65 feet of constant velocity testing. At a maximum speed of 10 mph, loading is either uni- or bi-directional. It can also wander up to 3 feet in a lateral direction to simulate real-world traffic distributions.
ATLAS weighs 156 kips and is 124 feet long, 12 feet high and 12 feet wide. Mounted on four crawler tracks, the test unit can be easily positioned on the pavement test section.