Comparison on travel scheduling between driving and walking trips by habitual car users

Research on walking behavior has become increasingly more important in the field of transportation in the past decades. However, the study of the factors influencing the scheduling decisions related to walking trips and the exploration of the differences between travel modes has not been conducted yet. This paper presents a comparison of the scheduling and rescheduling decisions associated with car driving trips and walking trips by habitual car users using a data set collected in Valencia (Spain) in 2010. Bivariate probit models with sample selection are used to accommodate the influence of pre-planning on the decision to execute a travel as pre-planned or not. The explicative variables considered are: socio-economic characteristics of respondents, travel characteristics, and facets of the activity executed at origin and at destination including the scheduling decisions associated with them. The results demonstrate that a significant correlation exists between the choices of pre-planning and rescheduling for both types of trips. Whether for car driving or walking trips, the scheduling decisions associated with the activity at origin and at destination are the most important explicative factors of the trip scheduling and rescheduling decisions. However, the rescheduling of trips is mainly influenced by modifications in the activity at destination. Some interesting differences arise regarding the rescheduling decision processes between travel modes: if pre-planned, walking trips are less likely to be modified than car driving trips, showing a more rigid rescheduling behavior.     

压密注浆在市政道路高填方路基处理设计中的应用探析

某市北环路工程处于平原地区,地质条件相对较好,有利于工程建设,但由于是新城区,分布有较多沟塘。该工程为水泥混凝土路面,属于刚性路面,对路基的不均匀沉降较为敏感,处理不好这些沟塘,就会产生不均匀沉降,影响道路的使用效果和寿命。压密注浆工艺近年来在建设工程领域应用较广,但还没有完整的理论体系,在公路和市政工程中的应用目前也是处在探索阶段。该工程通过方案比选最终采用了压密注浆工艺对高填方路基进行了加固处理,取得了良好的效果。     

Hybrid process of fabricating high-quality micro wine-glass fused silica resonators

A new hybrid method, which combines improved glass-blown technology with wet etching, is reported to fabricate micro wine-glass resonators with high-quality fused silica. The optimum placement is compared to achieve the resonators with good shell shape. The typical shell diameter is about 4mm and its thickness covers from dozens to hundreds of micrometers. The etching rates in corrosion solutions with different ratios and at different thicknesses of hemispherical shells are studied. We also conclude how to precisely control the thickness. The corrosion solutions with different ratios of HF solution to NH₄F solution make the spherical shells rougher in different degrees. The best roughness is 0.581 nm in the 1: 8 ratio corrosion solution while the original roughness is 0.537 nm. This fact shows that the resonator remains atomically smooth surface. Based on the glassblowing spherical fused silica structure, the thickness of the resonator is effectively controlled by buffered oxide etch (BOE) technology according to the measured etching rate. The measured resonant frequency of the hemispherical shell at ambient pressure and room temperature is 1.75 kHz of rocking mode which is close to the simulated frequency. Using such a low-cost hybrid approach, we can fabricate high-quality microscale resonators in batch.     

Impacts of urban built environment on empty taxi trips using limited geolocation data

This study identifies the determinants of the empty taxi trip duration (ETTD) by combining three high-resolution databases—geolocation data in New York City, geodatabase of urban planning data, and transportation facilities data. Considering the nature of duration data, hazard-based duration model is proposed to explore the relationships between causal factors and ETTD, coupling with three variations of baseline hazard distribution, i.e., Weibull distribution with heterogeneity, Weibull distribution, and log-logistic. Furthermore, the likelihood ratio test is presented to implement comparisons of three baseline hazard distributions, as well as spatial and temporal transferability of causal factors. The results show significant complementary effects by subway system and competitive effects by city bus and bicycling system, as well as significant impacts of trip length, airport trip, average annual income, and employment rate. Urban built environment, for instance, density of road, public facilities, and recreational sites and ratio of green space, has various impacts on ETTD. The elasticity estimations confirm significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity in impacts on ETTD. In addition, the analysis on elasticity also reveals the considerable impacts of severe traffic congestion on ETTD within Manhattan. The modeling can assist stakeholders in understanding empty taxi movements and measuring taxi system efficiency in urban areas.     

Techno-economic study of LNG diesel power (dual fuel) ship

This article mainly proposed three technically effective alternatives to comply with the emission control regulations and laws in shipping. Liquefied natural gas (LNG)-diesel dual fuel power technology was introduced through feasibility study on several aspects including research development, retrofitting methods, vessel type, safety issues, and other technical characteristics. Based on sample ship and route, economic evaluation was conducted on these three alternatives. Cost-effectiveness of each project was detailed in the calculation of net present value (NPV) and payback time via discount cash flow method. The findings show that LNG-diesel dual fuel power technology performs best among three alternatives. Due to the impact of fuel price, two scenarios were carried out in sensitivity analysis which witnessed a variation of NPV with the fluctuation of fuel price. Further study shows the turning point between project (i) and project (iii) with different discount rate and the interaction between discount rate and fuel price, left project (ii) the least cost-effective solution in three alternatives.     

Reliability Modeling and Maintenance Policy Optimization for Deteriorating System Under Random Shock

Performance degradation and random shock are commonly regarded as two dependent competing risks for system failures. One method based on effective service age is proposed to jointly model the cumulative effect of random shock and system degradation, and the reliability model of degradation system under Nonhomogeneous Poisson processes (NHPP) shocks is derived. Under the assumption that preventive maintenance (PM) is imperfective and the corrective maintenance (CM) is minimal repair, one maintenance policy which combines PM and CM is presented. Moreover, the two decision variables, PM interval and the number of PMs before replacement, are determined by a multi-objective maintenance optimization method which simultaneously maximizes the system availability and minimizes the system long-run expect cost rate. Finally, the performance of the proposed maintenance optimization policy is demonstrated via a numerical example.     

Personalization method of e-catalog based on user interesting degree

The user interesting degree evaluation index is designed to fulfill the users’ real needs, which includes the user’ attention degree of commodity, hot commodity and preferential commodity. User interesting degree model (UIDM) is constructed to justify the value of user interesting degree; the personalization approach is presented; operations of add and delete nodes (branches) are covered in this paper. The improved e-catalog is more satisfied to users’ needs and wants than the former e-catalog which stands for enterprises, and the improved one can complete the recommendation of related products of enterprises.     

提高公路路面摊铺平整度的方法探析

公路路面施工质量和行车舒适性主要通过公路路面摊铺平整度来反映。通过对公路路面平整度的影响因素进行分析，探讨提高公路路面摊铺平整度的方法，可为相关公路施工提供参考。     

A numerical study on piezoelectric energy harvesting by combining transverse galloping and parametric instability phenomena

This paper aims to numerically investigate the effects of parametric instability on piezoelectric energy harvesting from the transverse galloping of a square prism. A two degrees-of-freedom reduced-order model for this problem is proposed and numerically integrated. A usual quasi-steady galloping model is applied, where the transverse force coefficient is adopted as a cubic polynomial function with respect to the angle of attack. Time-histories of nondimensional prism displacement, electric voltage and power dissipated at both the dashpot and the electrical resistance are obtained as functions of the reduced velocity. Both, oscillation amplitude and electric voltage, increased with the reduced velocity for all parametric excitation conditions tested. For low values of reduced velocity, 2:1 parametric excitation enhances the electric voltage. On the other hand, for higher reduced velocities, a 1:1 parametric excitation (i.e., the same as the natural frequency) enhances both oscillation amplitude and electric voltage. It has been also found that, depending on the parametric excitation frequency, the harvested electrical power can be amplified in 70% when compared to the case under no parametric excitation.     

Development of knowledge based body structure concept design model

The purpose of this study is to propose a concept design process for an automotive body structure using technical information on the major joints and members of vehicles. First, in order to collect the technical information on major joints and members, 17 vehicles were selected using benchmark data. The collected technical information for the selected vehicles was the cross sectional shapes of each joint and member which were used for the analysis of joint stiffness, crashworthiness and static stiffness of the member to make a database along with cross section properties. This study applied a ‘What If Study’ technique to perform a concept design of an automotive body using the analyzed information and selected cross section meeting the design objectives. The criteria for the selection of the cross section were defined by subdividing the defined design objectives of an automotive body structure and constraints into members and joints. In order to configure an analysis model of an automotive body structure using the selected cross section, a shape parametric model was used and static stiffness, dynamic stiffness and crashworthiness were assessed to evaluate the configured automotive body structure. The evaluation result showed that the crashworthiness and static/dynamic stiffness were improved compared to an existing body structure. In addition, the weight of the body structure was reduced. Through this study, the process that can rapidly and effectively derive and evaluate the concept design of an automotive body structure was defined. It is expected that, henceforth, this process will be helpful for the study of automotive body structures.