Investigation of the effectiveness of tandem oil fences under currents

The behavior of the flow passing a tandem oil fence, and the performance of the fence, were investigated by experimental and numerical methods. The flow characteristics between tandem fences were measured by the particle image velocimetry (PIV) method for the rigid and open free surface between the two fences in order to gather reference data for numerical investigations. A method of assessing a tandem fence by tracing the movement of an oil droplet around the fence is introduced. The effect of the current speed, the separation distance between the two fences, the relative draft of the two fences, and the water depth on the oil containment between the fences was investigated.     

An anti-wind-up controller design based on a two-degrees-of-freedom servosystem design approach

In actual control systems, many types of restrictions or nonlinearities exist. For example, owing to nonlinearities in the actuators or sensors, the controller may not be applicable in some practical situations. Such a nonlinearity is amplitude saturation in actuators. Although it may sometimes be ignored, failure to consider actuator saturation may severely degrade the performance of a closed-loop system, and even lead to instability. On the other hand, limiting the controller gain to avoid saturation sacrifices control effort, and may lead to loss of performance. Many approaches have been tired in order to overcome these undesirable problems, and some good results have been obtained. The saturation has been replaced with a gain which is calculated as a function of the variance of the signal at its inputs. Based on this assumption, some attractive control theories have been introduced. Here, we introduce a useful anti-wind-up control system. In other words, the control system proposed has a very simple design process and can guarantee good control performance, as it is based on the assumption that the saturation is replaced with a varying gain. The validity of the proposed control system will be shown by comparing some simulation results.     

Multioutput analysis of cargo handling firms: An application to a Spanish port

Cargo handling in ports is a multioutput activity, as freight can arrive in many forms such as containers, bulk, rolling stock, or non-containerised general cargo. In this paper, the operation of cargo handling firms in a Spanish port is analysed through the estimation of a multioutput cost model that uses monthly data on three representative firms located at the Las Palmas port. This permits the calculation of product specific marginal costs, economies of scale (general and by firm) and economies of scope, which help identifying optimal pricing policies and the potential cost advantages of increasing production.     

Modelling route choice behaviour in multi-modal transport networks

The paper presents new findings on the influence of multi-modal trip attributes on the quality and competitiveness of inter-urban multi-modal train alternatives. The analysis covers the entire trip from origin to destination, including access and egress legs to and from the train network. The focus is on preferences for different feeder modes, railway station types and train service types as well as on the relative influence of time elements and transfer penalties. Data from dedicated surveys are used including individual objective choice sets of 235 multi-modal homebound trips in which train is the main transport mode. The observed trips have origins and destinations within the Rotterdam–Dordrecht region in The Netherlands with an average total trip time of 50 minutes. Hierarchical Nested Logit models are estimated to take account of unobserved similarities between alternatives at the home-end and the activity-end of the trip respectively, resulting in two-level nesting structures which differentiate between intercity (IC) and non-intercity railway station types at the upper level and between transit and private access modes at the lower level. In order to reflect the multi-dimensional structure of the data a more advanced so-called Multi-Nested GEV model according to the Principles of Differentiation has been estimated which significantly improves the explanatory power and stresses the importance of the home-end of the multi-modal trip.     

Application of Ant System to network design problem

Network design problem (NDP) is the problem of choosing from among a set of alternative projects which optimizes an objective (e.g., minimizes total travel time), while keeping consumption of resources (e.g., budget) within their limits. This problem is difficult to solve, because of its combinatorial nature and nonconvexity of the objective function. Many algorithms are presented to solve the problem more efficiently, while trading-off accuracy with computational speed. This increase in speed stems from certain approximations in the formulation of the problem, decomposition, or heuristics. This study adapts a meta – heuristic approach to solve NDP, namely Ant System (AS). The algorithm is first designed, and then calibrated to solve NDP for the Sioux Falls test network. The behavior of the algorithm is then investigated. The result seems encouraging.     

Rural mobility and mode choice: Evidence from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey

This article uses data from the 2001 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) to compare travel behavior in rural and urban areas of the U.S. As expected, the car is the overwhelmingly dominant mode of travel. Over 97% of rural households own at least one car vs. 92% of urban households; 91% of trips are made by car in rural areas vs. 86% in urban areas. Regardless of age, income, and race, almost everyone in rural areas relies on the private car for most travel needs. Mobility levels in rural areas are generally higher than in urban areas. That results from the more dispersed residences and activity sites in rural areas, which increase trip distances and force reliance on the car. Somewhat surprisingly, the rural elderly and poor are considerably more mobile than their urban counterparts, and their mobility deficit compared to the rural population average is strikingly less than for the urban elderly and poor compared to the urban average. Data limitations prevented a measurement of accessibility, however, and it seems likely that rural areas, by their very nature, are less accessible than urban areas, especially for the small percentage of car-less poor and elderly households.     

Preference Heterogeneity and Willingness to Pay for Travel Time Savings

We examined different model specifications to detect the presence of preference heterogeneity in a mode choice context. The specification that worked best allows for both systematic and random variations in tastes, with parameters obtained at the individual level using Bayesian methods. Subjective values of travel time (SVT) and expected individual compensated variation were derived and aggregated to obtain measures of social welfare. Results suggest that the benefit measures, both at the individual and at the social level, are sensitive to preference heterogeneity assumptions. SVT and welfare changes derived from travel time reductions could be underestimated if the traditional assumption of taste homogeneity is made (we detected differences up to 30% in both types of measures). We also obtained an empirical value for the error made when evaluating changes in social welfare using an approximation of the expected individual compensated variation (expressed as a function of individual SVT) rather than its exact expression.     

An improved cyclostationary feature detection based on the selection of optimal parameter in cognitive radios

Spectrum sensing is an important part of cognitive radio systems to find spectrum hole for transmission which enables cognitive radio systems coexist with the authorized radio systems without harmful interference. In this paper, an improved cyclostationary feature detection method is proposed to reduce computational complexity without loss of good performance based on the optimal parameter selection strategy for choosing detection parameters of cyclic frequency and lag. Taking binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) signals as examples, the theoretical analyses are presented for choosing the optimal parameters. Simulation results are given to certify the correctness of the proposed parameter selection strategy and show the performance of the proposed method.     

Creation of extension knowledge base system about intelligent detection in dendrobium huoshanense photosynthesis process

Aiming at the limitations of the existing knowledge representations in intelligent detection, a novel extension-based knowledge representation (EKR) is proposed. The definitions, grammar rules, and formal semantics of EKR are presented. A rhombus solving strategy (RSS) based on EKR is discussed in detail, including creation of the problem oriented model, extension operator, the solution formation of contradictions problem and extended inference of matter-element. A knowledge base system based on EKR and RSS is developed, which is applied in intelligent detection in the Dendrobium huoshanense photosynthesis process (DHPP). More reasonable results are obtained than traditional rule-based system. The EKR is feasible in intelligent detection to solve the limitations of traditional knowledge representations.