The objective of this paper is to quantify the dynamic vertical load imposed to the pavement on a Brazilian urban front engine bus application. The analyzed bus had a 4x2 configuration and it is allowed, according to Brazilian’s legal demand, to have 6 tons on the front axle and 10 tons on the rear axle, as static loads. Due to the fact that it is common to have overload situation on the mentioned application, it was tested the vehicle in two conditions: legal gross vehicle weight (GVW) and 0.5 ton / 1.0 ton overload on the front axle and rear axle respectively. It has been instrumented the rear axle with strain gauges to simulate it as a load cell, in order to quantify those conditions. Measurements were done on a real urban application (Belo Horizonte city – Brazil) and on proving ground (Randon – Caxias do Sul city – Brazil). Results showed significant differences between the static load, data used for pavement specification, and the dynamic vertical load, which could have a direct impact on the pavement lifetime.

commercial vehicle, pavement specification, vertical load