| dc.description.abstract | Brazil is one of the world's largest producers of grains, but its main producing regions
are far from ports and consumer centers. This generates a high demand for
transportation, supplied mostly by the use of commercial motor vehicle. During the
displacements, part of the product ends up being lost due to its fall through unsealed
places in the bodywork, in quantity influenced by the vibration level suffered by the
cargo, related to the condition of the road surface. In this sense, it is common to
establish between shippers and carriers a loss limit considered acceptable. However,
there are few studies that try to quantify the real loss of grains during transportation. In
general, in those that do, there is no determination of any quantification and
qualification parameter of the functional condition of the road, such as the pavement
roughness, which can affect the loss rate. Thus, this research aimed to evaluate the
influence of pavement roughness on cargo loss during bulk grain transportation and
the resulting financial impacts. To this end, the soybean loss of trucks on different road
segments was measured, and the pavement roughness on these same routes was
determined. The data was analyzed and compared among themselves and a
correlation between them was obtained. The established model relates the pavement
roughness level with the relative grain loss every 100 km and presented a good
statistical fit, with an R² of 0.95. The correlation was employed in evaluations, aiming
to determine the impact generated by grain loss at different levels of pavement
roughness. For this, the amount of soybean transported by trucks on the main route
for its flow in Rio Grande do Sul was estimated and, with the IRI of the route and the
established correlation, the corresponding soybean losses were calculated in product
quantity and financial value, with an estimated loss of 15.48 thousand tons of soybean
on this route in 2021, corresponding to R$ 47.73 million. Losses were also estimated
for hypothetical scenarios of different pavement’s functional qualities on this same
route, which indicated that the maintenance of the road with IRI of 1.8 m/km could
generate a reduction of 5.8 thousand tons in losses, equivalent to R$ 17.95 million. To
evaluate the long-term impact, the HDM-4 was used, applied to the same road route
and with the models for pavement roughness progression and fuel consumption
calibrated. Four maintenance scenarios were considered and vehicle operating costs
were added to the analysis. It was found that the road user’s costs increased by 3,4%
in relation to vehicle operating costs when considering the loss of soybeans in the
evaluations. Also, that the costs with interventions over the analysis period are
approximately half of the value of soybeans lost along the way in the same period and
that maintaining the irregularity at lower levels (between 1.8 m/km and 2.7 m/km)
throughout the analysis period leads to lower costs for users. | |
