Eddies around Madagascar — The retroflection re-considered

The Agulhas Current with its retroflection and attendant eddy-shedding is the cause of some of the greatest mesoscale variability in the ocean. This paper considers the area to the south and east of Madagascar, which provides some of the source waters of the Agulhas Current, and examines the propagating sea surface height signals in altimetry and output from a numerical model, OCCAM. Both show bands of variability along the axis of the East Madagascar Current (EMC) and along a zonal band near 25°S. Sequences of images plus associated temperature data suggest that a number of westward-propagating eddies are present in this zonal band. The paper then focuses on the region to the south of the island, where ocean colour and infra-red imagery are evocative of an East Madagascar Retroflection. The synthesis of data analysed in this paper, however, shows that remotely observed features in this area can be explained by anticyclonic eddies moving westward through the region, and this explanation is consistent with numerical model output and the trajectories of drifting buoys.     

轨道交通建设与城市道路相结合研究

为有效利用城市土地与空间资源,轨道交通多沿既有或规划城市道路敷设。在项目设计过程中,若未考虑好轨道交通与城市道路的关系,将会引起征地拆迁、道路改造、环境保护等一系列问题,有可能影响项目建设的顺利进行。因此,为提高轨道交通建设质量,从两者的空间关系、线形适应性等方面进行理论分析。结合城市空间规划,从环境适应性、技术可行性与经济合理性等多方面考虑确定合理的空间关系,以技术指标匹配性为参考指标,进行线路走向选择。通过工程实例的对应研究,论证理论分析的合理性及可操作性,可用于指导轨道交通的建设及城市道路的改造。     

Habitual travel behaviour: Evidence from a six-week travel diary

This paper introduces different methods to measure similarity of travel behaviour addressing the question of how repetitious travel behaviour actually is. It compares empirical results of the different methods based on the data from a six-week travel diary. In general, the results show that the day-to-day behaviour is more variable if measured with trip-based methods instead of methods based on time budgets. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the similarity declines if the method captures more of the complexity of the travel pattern. It is also shown that travel behaviour is neither totally repetitious nor totally variable. Even for the whole observation period, it is demonstrated that two days always have some common elements. Additionally, it is found that the different methods yield the same pattern of variability for different types of day. Travel behaviour is clearly more stable on work days. Similar results for all methods are also obtained concerning the question of how long the minimum period of observation should be. All measures show that the period should not be less than two weeks if one aims at measuring variability.     

超大跨度缆索承重桥梁结构体系

设计和建造跨海连岛大桥是新世纪桥梁工程面临的巨大挑战。超大跨度桥梁并不只是常规概念的外推,需要与之对应的结构体系。从根本上改变缆索承重桥梁的缆索体系,可以突破跨度极限。本文指出了常规结构体系向更大跨度发展的制约因素,从缆索体系的角度介绍了超大跨度斜拉桥、悬索桥以及斜拉 悬索组合桥可能采用的各种体系。这些体系试图在静力、动力方面能远远超出现有限制范围,极大地提高桥梁的跨越能力。同时,新体系的采用也给材料、设计和施工提出了很大的挑战。     

预应力混凝土箱梁桥横向受力分析方法的研究比较

以洋安大桥主桥5跨预应力混凝土变截面连续箱梁桥为背景,对其横向应力分别采用传统的平面框架法和空间有限元法进行分析比较,结果表明大部分关键截面平面框架法得到的横向应力远大于空间有限元法,在实际设计计算中须谨慎使用平面框架法。     

地下工程注浆技术研究新进展

注浆是土木、水利和矿山等工程建设中重要的防渗和加固技术。文章基于国内外注浆技术研究文献,总结了水泥等颗粒性浆液的“渗滤效应”及“黏度时空变异性”等理论研究成果,论述了非水反应高聚物、CW环氧树脂和微生物菌液等注浆新材料的应用现状及发展前景,介绍了细观力学数值模拟研究的突破性进展,可为地下工程注浆技术发展提供借鉴和启发作用。     

Congestion and pollution consequences of driving-to-school trips: A case study in Beijing

Parents compete for high-quality education for their children by enrolling them in good schools. However, in a Chinese mega-city like Beijing, three factors jointly lead to the spatial separation between schools and homes: the centralized public goods provision mechanism, the historical dependency in school location, and the constrained supply of housing in downtown. Without an adequate number of school buses, this spatial separation of schools and homes triggers the numerous long-distance driving-to-school trips by private vehicle during workday morning rush hours in Beijing. We use the start and end dates of “school holiday” as exogenous repeated shocks to the aggregate traffic congestion, and employ the two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression approach to examine the congestion and pollution consequences of such driving-to-school trips in Beijing. We find that, all else being equal, workdays during school holidays have a traffic congestion index 20% lower than that of non-school-holiday workdays. Such a sharp reduction in congestion leads to a significant decrease in PM₁₀ concentration. Policymakers should lower such “extra” congestion and environmental costs via optimizing the spatial balance between school supply and demand.     

Determination of limiting cavity depths for offshore spudcan foundations in a spatially varying seabed

The importance of accurate prediction of limiting cavity depths during offshore spudcan foundations installation has been variously highlighted in the literature. Nonetheless, most of the previous research is deterministic in nature and confined to homogenous soils. Since offshore clayey soils can be highly spatially variable, there is a practical need to take proper account of the spatial variability in the prediction of limiting cavity depths. In a bid to remedy this situation, large deformation finite element calculations combined with three-dimensional random fields were repeatedly conducted in this study within a Monte-Carlo framework. The continuous penetration of a spudcan initiated from surface was explicitly modeled until a full-localized flow-around mechanism was observed. Spatial variability was found to clearly affect the soil back-flow and thereby the limiting cavity depth, the latter of which takes a range of values that can be approximately modeled as a log-normal distribution. Characteristic limiting cavity depths at various probability levels were ascertained. An algebraic expression was proposed to explicitly predict the characteristic limiting cavity depths in random soils from the fractile. Particular attention was paid to the lower and upper 5% characteristic values, which are likely to be useful for reliability-based design.     

The same mode again? An exploration of mode choice variability in Great Britain using the National Travel Survey

The main focus of travel behaviour research has been explaining differences in behaviour between individuals (interpersonal variability) with less emphasis given to the variability of behaviour within individuals (intrapersonal variability). The subject of this paper is the variability of transport modes used by individuals in their weekly travel. Our review shows that previous studies have not allowed the full use of different modes in weekly travel to be taken into account, have used categorical variables as simple indicators of modal variability and have only considered a limited set of explanatory indicators in seeking to explain modal variability. In our analysis we use National Travel Survey data for Great Britain. We analyse modal variability with continuous measures of modal variability (Herfindahl–Hirschman Index, the difference in mode share between the primary and secondary mode, the total number of modes used). Taking inspiration from Hägerstrand (1970), we conceive that modal variability is determined by different types of spatial mobility constraints and find that reduced modal variability is predicted for having mobility difficulties, being aged over 60, being non-white, working full-time, living in smaller settlement, lower household income, having regular access to a car, having no public transport pass/season ticket and not owning a bicycle. The findings can support a change in perspective in transport policy from encouraging people to replace the use of one mode with another to encouraging people to make a change to their relative use of different transport modes.     

Walking accessibility and property prices

Walking is an imperative travel mode, especially for short trips. Walking accessibility, which is defined as the ease of reaching essential destinations in the walk-in catchment area, may affect property prices because residents are more likely to be willing to pay for this attribute. In addition, different categories of public services may have varied influencing directions and magnitude. These two hypotheses are tested in this study. Taking Xiamen, China as a case study, we estimate the cumulative opportunities of public services on foot and develop a set of hedonic pricing models (more specifically, two pre-specified ordinary least squares models, four Box-Cox transformed models, and two spatial econometric models) to estimate, whether and to what extent, walking accessibility contributes to price premiums (or discounts). Using a database of 22,586 second-hand residential properties in 358 multi- or high-storey residential complexes, we find that (1) walking accessibility to public services contributes to the variations in housing prices and plays a role in determining housing prices; (2) different categories of services have vastly divergent, even opposite, influencing impacts; and (3) walking accessibility to primary schools, commercial centers, and sports and cultural centers have positive effects on house prices whereas walking accessibility to comprehensive hospitals adversely affects housing prices. Methodologically, we confirm that spatial econometric methods improve estimation accuracy and have more explanatory power relative to the standard non-spatial models. Robustness check analysis further guarantees the plausibility of this study.