Tractor-semitrailer model for vehicles carrying liquids

This article presents a model for solving solid-fluid interactions in vehicles carrying liquids. A tractor-semitrailer model is developed by incorporating suspension systems and tire dynamics. Owing to the solid-fluid interaction, equations of motion for the vehicle system are coupled. To simplify the complicated solution procedure, the coupled equations are solved separately using two different codes. Each code is analyzed separately; but as the parameters of the two codes depend on each other, the codes must be connected at the end of each time step. To determine the dynamic behavior of the system, different braking moments are applied. As the braking moments increase, braking time decreases. However, it turns out that increasing the braking moment to more than a certain level produces no significant results. It is also shown that vehicles carrying fluids need a greater amount of braking moments in comparison to vehicles carrying solids during braking. In addition, as the level of the fluid inside the tanker increases, from one-third to two-third of the tanker's volume, the sloshing forces applied to the tanker's walls increase. It was also concluded that the strategy used in this article to solve for the solid-fluid interaction by incorporating vehicle dynamic effects represents an effective method for determining the dynamic behavior of vehicles carrying fluids in other critical maneuvers.     

Effects of the Los Angeles transit strike on highway congestion

In this paper we investigate the effect of the Los Angeles transit strike on highway congestion through analysis of highway sensor data, using both a before-and-after comparison, and a control group comparison. We found that average 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. traffic speeds declined by as much as 20% during the strike, and the average length of the rush period increased by as much as 200%, even though increases in traffic were small, despite the fact that transit riders constitute a small fraction of the traveling population. Speeds declined the most at locations upstream from the places where queues normally end. We believe that highways are especially susceptible to congestion during strikes because travelers have little opportunity to adjust and equilibrate their travel patterns, as is possible during ordinary periods of traffic growth.     

Demand for rail travel to and from airports

Rail access to airports is becoming increasingly important for both train operators and the airports themselves. This paper reports analysis of inter-urban rail demand to and from Manchester and Stansted Airports and the sensitivity of this market segment to growth in air traffic and the cost and service quality of rail services. The estimated demand parameters vary in an expected manner between outward and inward air travellers as well as between airport users and general rail travellers. These parameters can be entered into the demand forecasting framework widely used in the rail industry in Great Britain to provide an appropriate means of forecasting for this otherwise neglected market segment. The novel features of this research, at least in the British context, are that it provides the first detailed analysis of aggregate rail flows to and from airports, it has disaggregated the traditional generalised time measure of rail service quality in order to estimate separate elasticities to journey time, service headway and interchange, and it has successfully explored departures from the conventional constant elasticity position.     

Neuro-Fuzzy Control of a Tracked Vehicle Featuring Semi-Active Electro-Rheological Suspension Units

This paper presents vibration control of a tracked vehicle installed with electro-rheological suspension units (ERSU). As a first step, an in-arm type ERSU is designed, and its spring and damping characteristics are evaluated with respect to the intensity of electric fields. Subsequently, a 16 degree-of-freedom model for a tracked vehicle equipped with the proposed ERSU is established followed by the formulation of a neuro-fuzzy controller. This controller takes account for both ride quality and steering stability by adopting a weighting parameter between two performance requirements. The parameter is appropriately determined by employing a fuzzy algorithm associated with two fuzzy variables: the vertical speed of the body and the rotational angular speed of the wheel. Control performances to isolate unwanted vibration from bump and random road excitations are evaluated through computer simulations. In addition, maximum speed of the vehicle with 6 Watt power absorption is investigated with respect to the road roughness.     

Simulation Tools, Modelling and Identification, for an Automotive Shock Absorber in the Context of Vehicle Dynamics

For purpose of simulation of vehicle dynamics, a physical model of an automotive shock absorber has been developed and implemented in several software packages for multibody simulations. In the present paper, the damper model structure is shortly elaborated together with some measurement and estimation techniques to retrieve the model parameters, possibly from dynamometer measurements only. These techniques are illustrated on a shock absorber normally used on the front suspension of a BMW series 7.     

Optimum design of tilting bogie frame in consideration of fatigue strength and weight

This paper addresses the use of finite-element (FE) analysis to calculate the fatigue strength of a bogie frame, for the development of tilting trains in Korea. A multi-body dynamic analysis was performed to extract the load condition by tilting on curves. Using the results of the multi-body dynamic analysis and the load scenario setout in the UIC standard, FE analysis was performed to obtain the stress distribution and to calculate the fatigue strength. An attempt was made to minimize the weight of the bogie frame using a back-propagation artificial neural network (ANN). The results of this study reveal that the stresses at some nodes are near the fatigue limit in the Goodman diagram and by using back-propagation ANN, the weight of the bogie frame could be reduced by 4.7%.     

REGULATION OF PRODUCTION OF PARATHYROID HORMONE－RELATED PEPTIDE （PTHrP） AND EXPRESSION OF ITS mRNA IN A HUMANLIVER－DERIVED CE

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Digital exchange of design models between marine equipment libraries using hybrid neutral formats

The selection of marine equipment is a time-consuming process for a ship outfitting designer. The inefficiency originates from the paper-based exchange of design information between shipyards and equipment manufacturers. We propose a method to exchange equipment models for electronic commerce. Shipyard practices were investigated to find out how the outfitting CAD library is being used. We also surveyed international standards for the exchange of digital equipment models, and analyzed the macroparametric methodology. We propose a hybrid method to represent the geometric information using STEP AP203 or the macroparametric method. The nongeometric information is defined according to the Parts Library (PLIB) standard. We implement a pilot system and test it with a ship design data set. The equipment model proposed can be used in the design process with heterogeneous shipbuilding CAD systems. The equipment model can improve the design and purchase process in shipyards.     

PIV velocity field measurements of flow around a KRISO 3600TEU container ship model

The main purpose of this investigation was to demonstrate a useful application of the particle image velocimetry (PIV) method to analyze the complex flow characteristics around a ship. For a sample illustration, the KRISO 3600TEU container ship model was chosen. The flow structure in the stern and near-wake region of the model has been investigated experimentally in a circulating water channel. Instantaneous velocity fields measured by the PIV velocity field measurement technique have been ensemble-averaged to give details of flow structures such as the spatial distributions of the local mean velocity, vorticity, and turbulent kinetic energy. The free-stream velocity was fixed at U _o = 0.6m/s, and the corresponding Reynolds number based on the length between perpendiculars was about 9.0 × 10⁵. The container ship model shows a complicated three-dimensional flow structure in the stern and near-wake regions. The PIV results clearly revealed the formation of large-scale bilge vortices in the stern region and their effect on the flow in the near-wake. The results shown here provide valuable information for hull form design and the validation of viscous ship flow codes and of turbulence models.