Fiber concrete under temperature drop load with stochastic FEM

Plain concrete plate and fiber concrete plate subjected to temperature drop load were analyzed on stochastic finite element method （FEM）. It is found that fibers can enhance concrete ability to resist temperature drop load for improving concrete＇s fracture energy and deferring the crack process. It is found for concrete not to improve apparently its tensile strength and fracture energy is recommended to be its appraisal parameter.     

Performance-driven routing tree construction with buffer insertion and wire sizing

A new approach was proposed to construct a performance-driven rectilinear Steiner tree with simultaneous buffer insertion and wiresizing optimization （PDRST/BW） under a higher order resistance-inductancecapacitance （RLC） delay model. This approach is based on the concept of sharing-buffer insertion and dynamic programming approach combined with a bottom-up rectilinear Steiner tree construction. The performances include the timing delay and the quality of signal waveform. The experimental results show that our proposed approach is scalable and obtains better performance than SP-tree and graph-RTBW approaches for the test signal nets.     

Children’s mode choice for the school trip: the role of distance and school location in walking to school

Rising levels of childhood obesity in the United States and a 75% decline in the proportion of children walking to school in the past 30 years have focused attention on school travel. This paper uses data from the US Department of Transportation’s 2001 National Household Travel Survey to analyze the factors affecting mode choice for elementary and middle school children. The analysis shows that walk travel time is the most policy-relevant factor affecting the decision to walk to school with an estimated direct elasticity of −0.75. If policymakers want to increase walking rates, these findings suggest that current policies, such as Safe Routes to School, which do not affect the spatial distribution of schools and residences will not be enough to change travel behavior. The final part of the paper uses the mode choice model to test how a land use strategy—community schools—might affect walking to school. The results show that community schools have the potential to increase walking rates but would require large changes from current land use, school, and transportation planning practices.

Institutional constraints on transport policymaking: the case of company cars in Israel

Transportation analysis emphasizes the necessity to internalize the transport externalities of car usage through taxation. Yet taxation decisions are often made with non-transport goals in mind. In such cases, transport policies are made ‘by the way.’ This paper examines such a case: Israel’s taxation policy on company cars. It shows that current taxation policies result in increasing numbers of company cars and growing numbers of transport users who are not sensitive to the marginal cost of car use and make excessive use of the car. As a result, a significant portion of Travel Demand Management (TDM) measures cannot affect this group. The Israeli case of company car tax reform demonstrates the problematic effect of a policy that does not take its overall consequences on other policy fields into account and thereby impairs efforts to reduce the negative impacts of the transport system. Also, it demonstrates the importance of institutional aspects of transport policymaking.

An analysis on long term emission benefits of a government vehicle fleet replacement plan in northern illinois

There have been a number of studies of the effectiveness of vehicle scrappage programs, which offer incentives to accelerated scrappage of older vehicles often thought to be high emitters. These programs are voluntary and aimed at replacement of household vehicles. In contrast, there is a gap in knowledge related to the emissions benefits of government fleet replacement (retirement) programs. In this study, the efficacy of a fleet replacement program for a local government agency in Northern Illinois, the Forest Preserve of DuPage County (FPDC), is examined using a probabilistic vehicle survival model that accounts for time-varying covariates such as vehicle age and gasoline price. The vehicle lifetime operating emissions are calculated based on the estimated vehicle survival probabilities from the survival model and compared with those derived using the EPA default fleet used in MOBILE6 and the fleet represented by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) survival curve. The results suggest that while there may be short term emission benefits of the FPDC fleet replacement plan, the long-term emission benefits are highly sensitive to economic factors (e.g., future gasoline price) and exhibit a decreasing trend. This indicates that an adaptive multi-stage replacement strategy as opposed to a fixed one is preferable to achieve optimal cost effectiveness.

Hydrodynamics study of a BCF mode bioinspired robotic-fish underwater vehicle using Lighthill’s slender body model

This paper investigates the hydrodynamic characteristics of the rectilinear motion of a robotic fish underwater vehicle. This 2-joint, 3-link multibody vehicle model is biologically inspired by a body caudal fin carangiform fish propulsion mechanism. Navier–Stokes equations are used to compute the unsteady flow fields generated due to the interaction between the vehicle and the surrounding incompressible and Newtonian fluid (water) environment. The NACA 0014 airfoil aerodynamic profile has been designed to boost the swimming efficiency by reducing drag as the vehicle undergoes an undulatory/oscillatory motion. Using the Lighthill slender body model, a traveling wave mathematical function is defined to undulate the robotic fish posterior (caudal) region while the motion tracking is carried out by dynamic meshing technique. The results obtained show that though the net lift force approaches to zero, the net thrust or negative drag coefficient maintains a finite value dependent on kinematic parameters like tail beat frequency (TBF) and amplitude span (AS) at a given propulsive wavelength and the forward velocity of the vehicle. The results reveal the effects of TBF and AS on the coefficient of drag friction and the thrust force. Drag coefficients obtained from the simulations are compared and validated with the experimental results. The hydrodynamic results are found to be similar to the kinematic study results and suggest that TBF and AS play the most effective roles in the bioinspired propulsion technique. Relation of these parameters with propelling thrust force and forward velocity is also in conjunction over a given range of TBF and AS values.     

Experimental investigations on a low frequency horizontal pendulum ocean kinetic energy harvester for underwater mooring platforms

In the interest of extending the operation time of underwater mooring platforms, it is promising and feasible to harvest energy from ocean. A low frequency horizontal pendulum ocean kinetic energy harvester for underwater mooring platforms was presented in this paper. Several series of experimental tests on energy harvesting were carried out. The present research investigates the influence of parameters including excitation frequency, excitation amplitude, inertia modification (ballasting) and pendulum rod length, on the energy harvesting performance. Results show that this type of horizontal pendulum energy harvester has the best performance at resonant frequencies 0.2, 0.25 and 0.3 Hz, with the pendulum pitch angle 3°, 4° and 5°, respectively. It is indicated that the energy harvester can slightly tune the natural frequency to meet the prominent excitation frequency through varying the pendulum pitch angle. The test results also show that the optimal output power take off damping is 30 or 40 Ω in most case, and the maximum average output power can reach 0.3 W, with high normalized power density of 3453.8 kg/m³. Similarly, the results show that three parameters, excitation amplitude, inertia modification (ballasting), and pendulum rod length, have a significant influence on the energy harvesting. This work constitutes a preliminary step towards the development of a low frequency horizontal pendulum ocean kinetic energy harvester for underwater mooring platforms.     

The effects of free surface and end cell on flow around a finite circular cylinder with low aspect ratio

Vortex-induced motion is an oscillatory phenomenon which occurs to a floating body with low aspect ratio. The basic phenomenological study about the effects of free surface and end cell on flow around a finite fixed circular cylinder was investigated in this study using particle image velocimetry and hydrodynamic force measurement. It was found from the former experiment that the wake of the cylinder is influenced by the both end cell and free surface. Blowup and back flow are generated from the end cell, and their effects are suspended by free surface. The result of hydrodynamic force measurement showed the effect of Reynolds number, Froude number, and the aspect ratio of the floating body on the hydrodynamic force. Fluctuating components of hydrodynamic coefficients decrease for increasing Reynolds number, Froude number, and the aspect ratio. On the other hand, the mean drag coefficient increases as Froude number increases and decreases as the aspect ratio increases. The interpretation to these results was discussed in comparison with flow structures observed in the experiment. In addition, it was found that the effect of Reynolds number on the mean drag coefficient changes at different aspect ratios. A possible interpretation to this phenomenon was proposed.     

Simultaneous detection of the nonlinear restoring and excitation of a forced nonlinear oscillation: an integral approach

We address in this article, how to calculate the restoring characteristic and the excitation of a nonlinear forced oscillating system. Under the assumption that the forced nonlinear oscillator has a periodic solution with period \(T=2\pi / \omega\), we constructed a system of linear equations by introducing time-dependent multipliers. The periodicity assumption helps simplify the system of linear equations. The stability and uniqueness are also presented for the inverse problem. Numerical testing is conducted to show the effectiveness of our presented methodology.