Fatigue effects of embedding electric vehicles Charging Units into electrified road

A charging infrastructure network for Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) is more than an option for the transportation scenarios of the next years. From a pavement engineering point of view, this network consists in prefabricated Charging Units (CU) embedded into the road pavement, generating additional questions related to the structural life of the pavements in which the CU are located. Moreover, even if in the available literature few studies describe the structural response of e-road, the long-term performances of pavements are not fully investigated. This is the reason why this research analyzes fatigue behavior of electrified road (e-road) in comparison with traditional road (t-road). In particular, the study is devoted to identifying the number of critical load cycles leading to failure an e-road pavement. As a second stage, the theoretical and numerical results are verified applying the findings obtained during the first stage of the research to a real case study: Viale Forlanini in Milan (Italy), which is an important two carriageway road connecting the city center to the Linate airport. As a result of these analyzes, interesting outcomes were obtained regarding the fatigue effects of embedding CU into road pavement, estimating the service life and demonstrating that CU seems to be compatible with the structural effectiveness of the pavement, as also confirmed by the case study results.