Tests on ultimate strength of hull box girders made of high tensile steel

The experimental results of the collapse of three box girders subjected to pure bending moment are presented. The structures are made of high tensile steel of 690 MPa of nominal yield stress reinforced with bar stiffeners of the same material. The moment curvature curves are presented covering the pre- and post-collapse regions. The modes of collapse for each box girder are discussed considering the variation on the panel's slenderness. The concept of efficiency of high tensile steel structures is introduced. The concept is very useful to identify the governing parameters affecting the ultimate strength of 3D structures under predominant bending moment.     

Benthic community and food web structure on the continental shelf of the Bay of Biscay (North Eastern Atlantic) revealed by stable isotopes analysis

The North Bay of Biscay continental shelf is a major French demersal fishery, but little was known on the trophic food web of its benthic communities. In order to determine the benthic trophic web, the objectives of this study are to describe the macro- and megafaunal benthic community structure (species richness, abundance and biomass) and to establish the trophic pathways (food sources and trophic levels) by applying carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic analysis to the main benthic and demersal species (invertebrates and fish). Two distinct benthic communities have been identified: a muddy sand community within the central part of the bay, and an outer Bay of Biscay Ditrupa sand community of higher species richness, abundance and biomass than the muddy sand community. Deposit-feeders, suspension feeders and predators, distributed in three main trophic levels, dominate both communities. Large differences in stable carbon ratio values within the primary consumers provide evidence of two different food sources: i) a pelagic food source made up of recent sedimenting particulate organic matter on which zooplankton and suprabenthos feed and ii) a benthic detrital food source supplying deposit feeders and partly benthic suspension feeders. Differences in isotopic signatures were also observed within the upper trophic levels that allowed estimation of the contribution of each food source component to the diet of the upper consumers. Finally, the use of stable isotopic composition together with the species' feeding strategy allow identification of the main differences between the trophic functioning of the two benthic communities and highlight the importance of the role of detrital pathways in the carbon cycling within the continental shelf benthic trophic web.     

Cost-time Minimization in a Transportation Problem with Fuzzy Parameters: A Case Study

In real world applications the supply, the demand and the transportation cost per unit of the quantities in a transportation problem are hardly specified precisely because of the changing economic and environmental conditions. It is also important that the time required for transportation should be minimum. In this paper a method has been proposed for the minimization of transportation cost as well as time of transportation when the demand, supply and transportation cost per unit of the quantities are fuzzy. The problem is modeled as multi objective linear programming problem with imprecise parameters. Fuzzy parametric programming has been used to handle impreciseness and the resulting multi objective problem has been solved by prioritized goal programming approach. A case study has been made using the proposed approach.     

Development of models for predicting roadside nitrogen dioxide concentrations and their evaluation against datasets measured in Dublin,Ireland

Different methods for predicting levels of roadside NO₂ from NO_x concentrations have been proposed. Prior work suggests that either a linear or a logarithmic relationship exists among the roadside NO₂ and NO_x concentrations. We modify and compare those methods with new formulations based on the principles of the original methods for datasets pertaining to Dublin. A new relationship based on the power law is developed to better model the decay of the ratio of (NO₂/NO_x)_road ratio with increasing NO_x concentration. These formulations are compared and examined at two study sites: at an intermittently congested urban street canyon and a free-flowing motorway.     

Assessing the CO2 impact of current and future rail track in the UK

This paper investigates the CO₂ impact of current and future UK rail track and estimates the material, process and transport emissions associated with construction, maintenance and end-of-life activities for designs at high and low traffic loads. Analysis shows that for current track configurations, track with concrete sleepers has the lowest CO₂ impact, followed by steel, hardwood and softwood. Several potential future rail track designs have been analysed including embedded rail and double and quadruple-headed rail. All future track designs have a lower impact than current designs, but this improvement is more marked at high traffic loads. Up to a 40% reduction in CO₂ impact could be achieved if the UK rail network was to move from conventional track design to a double-headed embedded rail design. Key levers for reducing the CO₂ impact of track are identified as service life extension, traffic load reduction and the selection of low impact track designs.     

Contracting in highway maintenance and rehabilitation: Are spatial effects important?

Highway agencies around the world strive to improve practices for infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation, using project delivery policies that range from total ‘in-house’ responsibility to complete privatization, with a number of flexible contracting policies such as performance-based contracting, variants of design-build-maintain, and lane rentals among others between these two extremes. In this paper, we present a methodology that duly accounts for underlying spatial effects and estimates the expected cost savings of innovative contracting policies for highway maintenance and rehabilitation relative to in-house execution of these activities. Spatial econometric modeling is used to analyze highway contract data from 49 countries. We also investigate the marginal effects of key explanatory variables on contract cost savings using spatial multipliers. Our findings show that there are significant relationships between cost savings and contract characteristics, and that there is an apparent direct relationship between the average cost savings of contracts in a country and contract average cost savings and contract sizes in neighboring countries.     

Red-light cameras at intersections: Estimating preferences using a stated choice model

Red-light cameras placed at intersections have the potential to increase safety, but they are often viewed as an invasion of privacy. Preferences for these cameras were explored using a stated choice model that presents key attributes of camera placements. Stated choice models involve careful experimental design, akin to experimental control in laboratory settings. A variety of design approaches were used, settling on a composition of the choice sets people face in the survey. To illustrate the approach, an internet survey was used with a convenience sample containing a high percentage of college students. The results show that while not the case independently, as the number of cameras and fines for violators are simultaneously increased, the preferences for one particular red light cameras program are likely to improve.     

Off-set crack propagation analysis under mixed mode loadings

An assessment was carried out herein to study the eccentricity of cracks subjected to mixed-mode loadings. Several loading locations relative to a central line were selected to induce mixed-mode loadings, which were computed using a finite element method. An adaptive meshing technique was adopted during the simulation of crack propagation to ensure the singularity of stress at the tip of the crack. The stress intensity failure criterion was used and programmed, and the node splitting technique was used when the stress intensity factor reached the fracture toughness of the material to simulate crack propagations. It was found that large variations in the stress intensity factor were observed when off-set cracks were used, and that K _II decreased when loading distance increased, but increased when the off-set crack distance was increased. Both crack eccentricity and loading distance played important roles in producing mixed-mode loading, compared to the influence of central cracks. Correction factors were introduced to modify the calculation of stress intensity factors under mixed-mode loadings. Simulations of crack propagation were also conducted to study the effects of crack eccentricities and loading distances. It was found that the crack length, the loading distance relative to the central crack and the crack eccentricity dominated calculations of the integrity of cracked structures.     

Sampling of alternatives for route choice modeling

This paper presents a new paradigm for choice set generation in the context of route choice model estimation. We assume that the choice sets contain all paths connecting each origin–destination pair. Although this is behaviorally questionable, we make this assumption in order to avoid bias in the econometric model. These sets are in general impossible to generate explicitly. Therefore, we propose an importance sampling approach to generate subsets of paths suitable for model estimation. Using only a subset of alternatives requires the path utilities to be corrected according to the sampling protocol in order to obtain unbiased parameter estimates. We derive such a sampling correction for the proposed algorithm.Estimating models based on samples of alternatives is straightforward for some types of models, in particular the multinomial logit (MNL) model. In order to apply MNL for route choice, the utilities should also be corrected to account for the correlation using, for instance, a path size (PS) formulation. We argue that the PS attribute should be computed based on the full choice set. Again, this is not feasible in general, and we propose a new version of the PS attribute derived from the sampling protocol, called Expanded PS.Numerical results based on synthetic data show that models including a sampling correction are remarkably better than the ones that do not. Moreover, the Expanded PS shows good results and outperforms models with the original PS formulation.     

基于鳍片式热电模组的船舶柴油机废气余热利用及其影响因素分析

摘 要：设计了一种鳍片式热电转换模组,并将其应用在船舶柴油机废气余热回收系统中,通过理论和实验,分析鳍片式热电转换系统的影响因素。结果表明：当柴油机负荷为75%,热电晶片总数为1428,排气温度550K 时,设计的鳍片式热电模组发电功率为6.72kW,热电转换效率可达5.42%。排气温度、冷却水温度以及柴油机负荷都会影响热电转换系统性能。随着柴油机负荷的提高,热电转换系统发电功率和转换效率也随之增大,但负荷在75%之前增大的幅度大于从75%~100%的负荷。热电模组鳍片数量会影响转换系统的热端温度和传热量,在条件允许范围内,可通过增加鳍片数目,提高废热回收效率。