Storage space allocation in container terminals

Container terminals are essential intermodal interfaces in the global transportation network. Efficient container handling at terminals is important in reducing transportation costs and keeping shipping schedules. In this paper, we study the storage space allocation problem in the storage yards of terminals. This problem is related to all the resources in terminal operations, including quay cranes, yard cranes, storage space, and internal trucks. We solve the problem using a rolling-horizon approach. For each planning horizon, the problem is decomposed into two levels and each level is formulated as a mathematical programming model. At the first level, the total number of containers to be placed in each storage block in each time period of the planning horizon is set to balance two types of workloads among blocks. The second level determines the number of containers associated with each vessel that constitutes the total number of containers in each block in each period, in order to minimize the total distance to transport the containers between their storage blocks and the vessel berthing locations. Numerical runs show that with short computation time the method significantly reduces the workload imbalance in the yard, avoiding possible bottlenecks in terminal operations.     

A cross-country study of fairness and infringement on freedom as determinants of car owners' acceptance of road pricing

Jakobsson et al. (2000) found that in Sweden public acceptance of road pricing decreases if it is perceived to be unfair and to infringe on freedom. The present study reports a survey investigating whether the same effects are found in the Asian countries of Japan and Taiwan. The results indicate that fairness plays the same role. However, income had a direct effect on acceptance in Taiwan but not in Japan or Sweden.     

Correlation between automotive CO, HC, NO, and PM emission factors from on-road remote sensing: implications for inspection and maintenance programs

Carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC), and nitrogen oxide (NO) emission factors (EFs) are measured with a commercial vehicle emissions remote sensing system (VERSS) during a large-scale vehicle exhaust emissions study in Las Vegas. Particulate matter (PM) EFs are simultaneously measured for individual vehicles with a newly developed PM-VERSS based on ultraviolet backscatter light detection and ranging (Lidar). The effectiveness of CO and HC EFs as proxy for NO and PM EFs for spark-ignition vehicles is evaluated. Poor correlations were found between EFs for pollutants on an individual vehicle basis indicating that high EFs for one or more pollutants cannot be used as a predictor of high EFs for other pollutants. Stronger functional relationships became evident after averaging the EF data in bins based on rank-order of a single pollutant EF. Low overlap between the highest 10% emitters for CO, HC, NO, and PM was found. These results imply that for an effective reduction of the four pollutants, inspection and maintenance (I/M) programs, including clean screening, should measure all four pollutants individually. Fleet average CO and HC concentrations determined by gaseous VERSS were compared with fleet average CO and HC concentrations measured at low-idle and at high-idle during local I/M tests for spark-ignition vehicles. The fleet average CO concentrations measured by I/M tests at either idle were about half of those measured by remote sensing. The fleet average high-idle HC concentration measured by I/M tests was about half of that measured by VERSS while low-idle I/M and VERSS HC average concentrations were in better agreement. For a typical vehicle trip, most of the fuel is burned during non-idle conditions. I/M measurements collected during idling conditions may not be a good indicator of a vehicle’s potential to be a high emitter. VERSS measurements, when the vehicle is under a load, should more effectively identify high emitting vehicles that have a large contribution to the mobile emissions inventory.     

车辆行驶工况滚动阻力系数的测定

分析了车辆滚动阻力系数的影响因素，论述了车辆行驶速度对滚阻力系数的影响。依据车辆行驶的功率平衡原理，提出了滚动阻力系数的测试方法及测试时应注意的问题。并对实车测试值与经验公式估算值进行了比较。     

车辆高速行驶安全的思考

分析了轮胎等汽车部件对行车安全的作用，论述了对ABS和车轮定位参数日常检测的必要性．介绍了电涡流中央制动器的制动原理和使用成本。     

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。     

Optimal Threshold Policies for Robust Data Center Control

With the simultaneous rise of energy costs and demand for cloud computing, efficient control of data centers becomes crucial. In the data center control problem, one needs to plan at every time step how many servers to switch on or off in order to meet stochastic job arrivals while trying to minimize electricity consumption. This problem becomes particularly challenging when servers can be of various types and jobs from different classes can only be served by certain types of server, as it is often the case in real data centers. We model this problem as a robust Markov decision process (i.e., the transition function is not assumed to be known precisely). We give sufficient conditions (which seem to be reasonable and satisfied in practice) guaranteeing that an optimal threshold policy exists. This property can then be exploited in the design of an efficient solving method, which we provide. Finally, we present some experimental results demonstrating the practicability of our approach and compare with a previous related approach based on model predictive control.     

Characteristics analysis for travel behavior of transportation hub passengers using mobile phone data

The travel behavior of passengers from the transportation hub within the city area is critical for travel demand analysis, security monitoring, and supporting traffic facilities designing. However, the traditional methods used to study the travel behavior of the passengers inside the city are time and labor consuming. The records of the cellular communication provide a potential huge data source for this study to follow the movement of passengers. This study focuses on the passengers’ travel behavior of the Hongqiao transportation hub in Shanghai, China, utilizing the mobile phone data. First, a systematic and novel method is presented to extract the trip information from the mobile phone data. Several key travel characteristics of passengers, including passengers traveling inside the city and between cities, are analyzed and compared. The results show that the proposed method is effective to obtain the travel trajectories of mobile phone users. Besides, the travel behavior of incity passengers and external passengers are quite different. Then, the correlation analysis of the passengers’ travel trajectories is provided to research the availability of the comprehensive area. Moreover, the results of the correlation analysis further indicate that the comprehensive area of the Hongqiao hub plays a relatively important role in passengers’ daily travel.

     

专家系统在公路工程中的应用探讨

目前,专家系统在国外的各行各业都得到了普遍应用。本文简要介绍了专家系统的概况优越性和未来的发展,较详细的介绍了专家系统在公路方面的应用。该文对我们推广应用专家系统在公路工程中的应用有一定的启迪。