Automatic measurement of payload for heavy vehicles using strain gages

Accidents caused by heavy vehicles have been increasing in recent years. This is mainly due to the fact that vehicle overloading results in steering difficulty and long braking distance. Therefore, this work aims to develop an automatic payload measurement for heavy vehicles, so that drivers and police officers can monitor vehicle payload while on board the measured vehicle. For the ease of installation, high accuracy, and low cost, this work proposes to paste strain gages onto each leaf spring in vehicle suspensions. Based on measured output voltages of bridge circuits in each suspension, the vehicle payload is calculated. Moreover, for promoting the accuracy of calculated payload, this work develops neural network models to account for nonlinearity in measurement. Finally, this work verifies model accuracy based on experimental data.