A moving bottleneck

Suppose that a vehicle or convoy enters a two-lane unidirectional roadway and travels at a velocity v^* less than the prevailing traffic. This moving bottleneck may cause a queue to form as vehicles try to pass the obstruction. It is shown that by going to a moving coordinate system traveling at velocity v^* the analysis of this can be transformed into a corresponding analysis of flow past a stationary bottleneck. The theory is then extended to investigate possible consequences of trucks on grades.     

Strategies for Serving Peak Elevator Traffic

—Suppose that in an office building of moderate height (5 to 20 floors) elevator traffic during peak periods is predominantly between a lobby floor and various upper floors. We compare the waiting plus riding time and the average number of passengers carried per trip for various strategies. In particular, if two (or more) elevators serve the same group of floors (a common strategy), the waiting plus riding time would typically be (slightly) less if one split the group into two parts and had each elevator serve separate parts of this group. The latter strategy would have considerably fewer passengers per trip. It may also be advantageous to have a single elevator serve different floors on successive trips. Seldom would it be advantageous for an elevator to serve more than 2 or 3 floors on any trip. If elevator systems used more efficient strategies during peak periods, buildings would not need as many elevators.     

Modelling of high speed gas quenching

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Construction Techniques for the Small-radius Curved Shield Tunnels in Water-rich Fractured Stratum with High Pressure北大核心CSCD

A variety of construction problems, such as bad cutting effects of cutters, unreasonable boring parame- ters and blowout, are often encountered during shield tunnelling under unfavorable geological conditions. Aimed at these construction difficulties of high pressure, abundant underground water, fractured rock stratum, long distance and small-radius curves of Fuzhou metro, the mechanical behaviors of cutting tools were analyzed through theoreti- cal calculations of cutter cutting force, then the reasonable cutter configuration, tunneling parameters and the proper time for cutter replacement were presented. Some measures, such as screw conveyor renovation, mucking control and lowering of groundwater, were adopted for controlling blowout based on practice. The stability of excavation face was analyzed by numerical simulation, and the measures for shield boring and posture control in the long distance and small radius curved tunnels were summarized. The conclusions are as follows: 1) when shield machine is driven in fractured stratum, the effect of lateral impact force produced by spalling rock on cutter will be very large and rein- forcement is needed for cutter; 2) cutter replacement should be taken at proper time based on muck samples in con- ditions of increasing of total shield thrust by 4 000-7 000 kN, cutter torque by 1 000-1 500 kN•m and driving speed smaller than 10 mm/min; 3) adopting screw conveyor device with innovative anti-blowout devices and control measures for ground precipitation and mucking, it controls blowout effectively; 4) the maximum axis offset and the height offset of segment meet the requirements of shield construction specifications during shield construction of long distance small-radius curved tunnel. © 2018, Editorial Office of "Modern Tunnelling Technology". All right reserved.     

Review of empirical and semi-empirical Y factor solutions for cracked welded tubular joints

The practical use of fracture mechanics has been established for use on large turbine and electric generator rotor components used in the atomic power generation and the aircraft industry. Application areas in the offshore industry have also been identified. Fracture mechanics is currently used at the design stage of offshore facilities. It provides the basis for fatigue life prediction, steel selection and tolerance setting on allowable weld imperfections. Fracture mechanics is also used during the operational stage of a structure to make important decisions on inspection scheduling and repair strategies and as a tool for establishing limits on operational conditions. Linear elastic fracture mechanics relies on the use of the stress intensity factor concept. The stress intensity factor is a very important fracture mechanics parameter. Therefore, the accuracy of any fracture mechanics model for the prediction of fatigue crack growth in offshore structures for example will depend very much on the accuracy of the stress intensity factor solution used. Several empirical and semi-empirical solutions have been developed over the years with varying degrees of accuracy. This paper presents a review of some of these methods and attempts to assess their accuracy in predicting Y factors for welded tubular joints by comparing predicted results with experimental data obtained from fatigue tests conducted on large scale welded tubular joints. The experimental results were conducted under simulated service conditions, using a jack-up offshore standard load history (JOSH). A comparison between the experimental and predicted results shows that there may be other factors, which influence fatigue crack growth under variable amplitude conditions. Some of these factors have been identified and discussed in this paper.     

Design and implementation of efficient transit networks: Procedure, case study and validity test

This paper presents and tests a method to design high-performance transit networks. The method produces conceptual plans for geometric idealizations of a particular city that are later adapted to the real conditions. These conceptual plans are generalizations of the hybrid network concept proposed in Daganzo (2010). The best plan for a specific application is chosen via optimization. The objective function is composed of analytic formulae for a concept’s agency cost and user level of service. These formulae include as parameters key demand-side attributes of the city, assumed to be rectangular, and supply-side attributes of the transit technology. They also include as decision variables the system’s line and stop spacings, the degree to which it focuses passenger trips on the city center, and the service headway. These decision variables are sufficient to define an idealized geometric layout of the system and an operating plan. This layout-operating plan is then used as a design target when developing the real, detailed master plan. Ultimately, the latter is simulated to obtain more accurate cost and level of service estimates.This process has been applied to design a high performance bus (HPB) network for Barcelona (Spain). The idealized solution for Barcelona includes 182 km of one-way infrastructure, uses 250 vehicles and costs 42,489 €/h to build and run. These figures only amount to about one third of the agency resources and cost currently used to provide bus service. A detailed design that resembles this target and conforms to the peculiarities of the city is also presented and simulated. The agency cost and user level of service metrics of the simulated system differ from those of the idealized model by less than 10%. Although the designed and simulated HPB systems provide sub-optimal spatial coverage because Barcelona lacks suitable streets, the level of service is good. Simulations suggest that if the proposed system was implemented side-by-side with the current one, it would capture most of the demand.     

Agricultural vehicles and sustainable safe road traffic: solving conflicts on arterial highways

Addressing the issues of traffic safety in rural areas presents a constant challenge. The mix of light and heavy vehicles and the considerable differences in speed among these traffic participants result in high risks and delays for the faster vehicles. Agricultural vehicles (AVs) in particular have such an impact on traffic, especially when using arterial highways. This paper reviews the problems of safety and delays that AVs cause on arterial highways, and the appropriate mitigation. The concept of 'sustainable safety' in The Netherlands focuses on these problems, because of the proposed construction of parallel roads alongside all arterial highways. However, Dutch accident statistics cannot justify the high costs for the construction of parallel roads alongside 7000 km of arterial highways. Delays experienced by fast traffic are another reason for separating AVs from other road users with parallel roads. Alternative measures alongside the arterial highway, such as passing bays, restricting AVs to travelling at off-peak only and improving the conspicuity of the AVs, may be more cost-effective ways of reducing delays and/or improving traffic safety on arterial highways. Another solution may be to eliminate the need for AVs to use the arterial highway by altering their routes. For this purpose, land reallocation projects (as practised in Holland) can provide a useful tool.     

Analyzing car ownership in Quebec City: a comparison of traditional and latent class ordered and unordered models

Private car ownership plays a vital role in the daily travel decisions of individuals and households. The topic is of great interest to policy makers given the growing focus on global climate change, public health, and sustainable development issues. Not surprisingly, it is one of the most researched transportation topics. The extant literature on car ownership models considers the influence of exogenous variables to remain the same across the entire population. However, it is possible that the influence of exogenous variable effects might vary across the population. To accommodate this potential population heterogeneity in the context of car ownership, the current paper proposes the application of latent class versions of ordered (ordered logit) and unordered response (multinomial logit) models. The models are estimated using the data from Quebec City, Canada. The latent class models offer superior data fit compared to their traditional counterparts while clearly highlighting the presence of segmentation in the population. The validation exercise using the model estimation results further illustrates the strength of these models for examining car ownership decisions. Moreover, the latent class unordered response models perform slightly better than the latent class ordered response models for the metropolitan region examined.     

A fast implementation of MPC-based motion cueing algorithms for mid-size road vehicle motion simulators

The use of dynamic driving simulators is constantly increasing in the automotive community, with applications ranging from vehicle development to rehab and driver training. The effectiveness of such devices is related to their capabilities of well reproducing the driving sensations, hence it is crucial that the motion control strategies generate both realistic and feasible inputs to the platform. Such strategies are called motion cueing algorithms (MCAs). In recent years several MCAs based on model predictive control (MPC) techniques have been proposed. The main drawback associated with the use of MPC is its computational burden, that may limit their application to high performance dynamic simulators. In the paper, a fast, real-time implementation of an MPC-based MCA for 9 DOF, high performance platform is proposed. Effectiveness of the approach in managing the available working area is illustrated by presenting experimental results from an implementation on a real device with a 200?Hz control frequency.     

SCR control strategy based on ANNs and Fuzzy PID in a heavy-duty diesel engine

The paper presents an innovative method combining artificial neural networks (ANNs) with Fuzzy PID to demonstrate the advantages of this control approach for meeting both NOx emission requirements and NH3 slip targets. An ANN model was utilized to simulate the formation of NOx emissions under various engine operating conditions. Next, an effective closed-loop control strategy with a type of feedback known as fuzzy PID is adopted for on-line, real-time control of 32.5% aqueous urea dosing in the exhaust stream. The new strategy explores the benefits by simulation and testing in the environments of Matlab/Simulink and ESC/ETC, respectively. The notable achievement of considerable NOx reduction and an acceptably small NH3 slip is obtained based on this new, feasible and effective strategy.