Experimental and empirical investigations of traffic flow instability

Traffic instability is an important but undesirable feature of traffic flow. This paper reports our experimental and empirical studies on traffic flow instability. We have carried out a large scale experiment to study the car-following behavior in a 51-car-platoon. The experiment has reproduced the phenomena and confirmed the findings in our previous 25-car-platoon experiment, i.e., standard deviation of vehicle speeds increases in a concave way along the platoon. Based on our experimental results, we argue that traffic speed rather than vehicle spacing (or density) might be a better indicator of traffic instability, because vehicles can have different spacing under the same speed. For these drivers, there exists a critical speed between 30 km/h and 40 km/h, above which the standard deviation of car velocity is almost saturated (flat) along the 51-car-platoon, indicating that the traffic flow is likely to be stable. In contrast, below this critical speed, traffic flow is unstable and can lead to the formation of traffic jams. Traffic data from the Nanjing Airport Highway support the experimental observation of existence of a critical speed. Based on these findings, we propose an alternative mechanism of traffic instability: the competition between stochastic factors and the so-called speed adaptation effect, which can better explain the concave growth of speed standard deviation in traffic flow.     

船用离心泵状态监测

实现机舱设备实时状态监测及评估是智能船舶以及无人机舱发展过程中的重要部分,也是事后维修、定期维修向视情维修转变过程的关键技术.本文利用最小二乘多项式拟合法对实验数据进行拟合,得到离心泵Q-H特性曲线拟合多项式.在某一进出口压差下,比较拟合流量和监测流量之间的差值来表征离心泵实时性能状态,并通过设置不同程度的泄露故障验证该方法的有效性.相比于用CFD软件建模仿真以及监测振动等方法,该方法可行性强、简单实用、成本较低,具有重要的实际工程应用价值.     

潜艇均衡系统自流注水调节阀稳态噪声试验研究

本文模拟建立了潜艇均衡系统自流注水试验系统,对不同假海压力、不同系统流量、不同出口背压及串联2台调节阀时自流注水稳定过程振动噪声进行研究。结果表明:潜艇均衡注水振动噪声随着假海深度的增大而增大;空气噪声随流量调节阀开度的增大而增大,在流量调节阀开度为60°-70°之间,振动加速度及水动力噪声产生峰值;在出口背压为0-0.5 MPa之间时,振动噪声值均大于无背压状态,峰值为0.2 MPa;串联2台流量调节阀可大幅降低自流注水振动噪声。     

鱼雷发动机三组元比例控制器数值模拟

利用计算流体力学软件Pumplinx模拟鱼雷发动机中三组元比例控制器的内部流场,分析计算中不同压差情况下对比例控制器性能的影响,以及叶片与定子间间隙大小对于比例控制器性能的影响,同时对不同叶片数目下性能进行对比。计算结果表明:由于比例控制器为被动旋转马达结构,其转速和流量均随时间呈周期性脉动变化,随着工作压差增大,转速脉动幅度基本保持不变,而流量和扭矩脉动幅值增加;随着间隙增大,泄漏量增大,但流量、扭矩、转速脉动幅值大幅降低,出口流量较为平稳;叶片数目增多后比例控制器转速降低、排量降低。由计算结果推断出目前比例控制器的最优叶片数目为4。本文可为进一步研究比例控制器精度问题提供参考。     

Continuum theory for pedestrian traffic flow: Local route choice modelling and its implications

This contribution puts forward a novel multi-class continuum model that captures some of the key dynamic features of pedestrian flows. It considers route choice behaviour on both the strategic (pre-trip) and tactical (en-route) level. To achieve this, we put forward a class-specific equilibrium direction relation of the pedestrians, which is governed by two parts: one part describing the global route choice, which is pre-determined based on the expectations of the pedestrians, and one part describing the local route choice, which is a density-gradient dependent term that reflects local adaptations based on prevailing flow conditions.Including the local route choice term in the multi-class model causes first of all dispersion of the flow: pedestrians will move away from high density areas in order to reduce their overall walking costs. Second of all, for the crossing flow and bi-directional flow cases, local route choice causes well known self-organised patterns to emerge (i.e. diagonal stripes and bi-directional lanes). We study under which demand conditions self-organisation occurs and fails, as well as what the impact is of the choices of the different model parameters. In particular, the differences in the weights reflecting the impact of the own and the other classes appear to have a very strong impact on the self-organisation process.     

水下容器开启过程流场特性仿真研究

水下容器开启过程中,海水快速灌入容器内,对载体的平衡产生较大的影响.采用Mixture多相流计算模型求解气液两相流场,网格更新方法采用域动分层法,对不同开启角度进行数值计算.结果表明:开启角度越小,容器底部压力和容器内部进水量波动越大,且峰值越大,随着开启角度的增大,两者波动范围有所减缓,研究成果可为水下容器总体设计、系统使用流程优化提供理论支撑.     

舰船开孔流动噪声控制措施研究

基于计算流体软件,采用大涡模拟方法计算了给定来流速度条件下表面开孔的非定常流场,分析了流场的非定常流频谱特性,采用边界元方法模拟了噪声源特征,对各种流动噪声控制措施进行了对比分析.计算结果表明,开孔形式的改变会直接影响流噪声的水平,设计结果可以为舰船流水孔的降噪设计提供参考.     

A stochastic model of traffic flow: Theoretical foundations

In a variety of applications of traffic flow, including traffic simulation, real-time estimation and prediction, one requires a probabilistic model of traffic flow. The usual approach to constructing such models involves the addition of random noise terms to deterministic equations, which could lead to negative traffic densities and mean dynamics that are inconsistent with the original deterministic dynamics. This paper offers a new stochastic model of traffic flow that addresses these issues. The source of randomness in the proposed model is the uncertainty inherent in driver gap choice, which is represented by random state dependent vehicle time headways. A wide range of time headway distributions is allowed. From the random time headways, counting processes are defined, which represent cumulative flows across cell boundaries in a discrete space and continuous time conservation framework. We show that our construction implicitly ensures non-negativity of traffic densities and that the fluid limit of the stochastic model is consistent with cell transmission model (CTM) based deterministic dynamics.     

深中通道西人工岛岛形对护面块体稳定性和堤顶越浪的影响

针对深中通道西人工岛特殊岛形,利用物理模型试验手段,验证最不利波浪作用下块体稳定性和堤顶越浪量。结果表明:入射波在内凹的岛壁弧顶迅速形成能量聚集,在岛端部外凸出转角处产生波能释放和漩涡流等复杂不利的波态;凹凸多变岛形也导致护面的扭王字块块体咬合性能减弱,多因素影响致使质量5 t设计护面块体失稳,经多次优化后,岛壁堤身段增加至8 t、端部转角特殊段须增加至14 t方能稳定;岛壁越浪规律为沿波浪入射处至端部转角段逐渐增加。将试验结果与规范公式计算结果、二维水槽断面试验结果进行对比,得到结论:受岛形影响下的稳定质量和越浪均偏大,尤其端部转角凸出的特殊区域,因此设计应给予关注,尽量遵循规范的相关规定,即"轴线向外侧拐,保证夹角大于150°以上"的要求。通过试验也再次验证了三维整体试验在稳定性、越浪量和优化设计方面的必要性。     

Closed-form multiclass cell transmission model enhanced with overtaking,lane-changing,and first-in first-out properties

A novel multiclass macroscopic model is proposed in this article. In order to enhance first-in, first-out property (FIFO) and transmission function in the multiclass traffic modeling, a new multiclass cell transmission model with FIFO property (herein called FM-CTM) is extended from its prior multiclass cell transmission model (M-CTM). Also, to enhance its analytical compactness and resultant computational convenience, FM-CTM is formulated in this paper as a set of closed-form matrix equations. The objective is to improve the accuracy of traffic state estimation by enforcing FIFO property when a fast vehicle cannot overtake a slow vehicle due to a limitation of a single-lane road. Moreover, the proposed model takes into account a different priority for vehicles of each class to move forward through congested road conditions, and that makes the flow calculation independent from their free-flow speeds. Some hypothetical and real-world freeway networks with a constant or varying number of lanes are selected to verify FM-CTM by comparing with M-CTM and the conventional CTM. Observed densities of VISSIM and real-world dataset of I-80 are selected to compare with the simulated densities from the three CTMs. The numerical results show that FM-CTM outperforms the other two models by 15% of accuracy measures in most cases. Therefore, the proposed model is expected to be well applicable to the road network with a mixed traffic and varying number of lanes.