Practically applicable devices for blocking the gap flow of a horn rudder to reduce rudder cavitation and their verification through numerical simulations

Rudder cavitation causes serious damage to the rudder and affects the safety and cost-effectiveness of a ship. In recent applications, a semicircular prismatic bar protruding beyond the concave surface of the horn facing the gap, located along the center-plane of the rudder, has been used to lessen the gap flow between the horn and the movable portion of the rudder system. Previous numerical studies with this single bar indicate that it can noticeably reduce rudder cavitation. In the present study, a pair of bars for blocking the vertical gaps, which are attached symmetrically to the center-plane on opposite convex surfaces of the movable portion, is suggested for circumventing the difficulties that arise in the practical application of single centre bars. Placed near the outer edges of the gap, the bars are are easily accessible at the maximum rudder angle to allow simple installation during routine ship maintenance. An additional blocking disk is inserted on top of the pintle block, blocking the horizontal gaps. Three-dimensional computations are conducted with these combined devices and the results show that the devices are remarkably efficacious in reducing rudder gap cavitation.     

In and out vision-based driver-interactive assistance system

The overall driving environment consists of the Traffic environment, vehicle and driver states (TVD). advanced driver assistance Systems (ADAS) must consider not only information on each of the TVD states but also their context. Recent research has focused on making more efficient and effective assistance systems by fusing all the information from the TVD states. Based on this research trend, this paper focuses on decision-level fusion to estimate the level of danger of a warning by using visual information of the traffic environment and the driver state. The driver state consists of the gazing region and the facial feature points that are obtained using the active appearance model (AAM). The traffic environment state consists of time to collision (TTC), time to lane Crossing (TLC), and lane color information, which are obtained from the environment in front of the vehicle, i.e., position of lanes and other vehicles. Warnings against lane-off, collision, and driver inattention are generated by fusing this vision-based information from inside and outside the vehicle. The experimental results prove that our vision-based interactive driver assistance system reduces most useless warnings.     

Isrss: Integrated side/rear safety system

As driver assistant systems (DAS) and active safety vehicles (ASV) with various functions become popular, it is not uncommon for multiple systems to be installed on a vehicle. If each function uses its own sensors and processing unit, it will make installation difficult and raise the cost of the vehicle. As a countermeasure, research integrating multiple functions into a single system has been pursued and is expected to make installation easier, decrease power consumption, and reduce vehicle pricing. This paper proposes a novel side/rear safety system using only one scanning laser radar, which is installed in the rear corner of the driver’s side. Our proposed system, ISRSS (integrated side/rear safety system), integrates and implements four system functions: BSD (blind spot detection), RCWS (rear collision warning system), semi-automatic perpendicular parking, and semi-automatic parallel parking. BSD and RCWS, which operate while the vehicle is running, share a common signal processing result. The target position designation for perpendicular parking and parallel parking situations is based on the same signal processing. Furthermore, as system functions during running and those during automatic parking operate in exclusive situations, they can share common sensors and processing units efficiently. BSD and RCWS system functions were proved with 13025 and 2319 frames, respectively. The target position designation for perpendicular and parallel parking situations was evaluated with 112 and 52 situations and shows a success rate of 98.2% and 92.3%, respectively.     

社区步行通达性对独栋住宅房价的效益评估--美国德克萨斯州奥斯丁市空间特征分析

通过分析美国德克萨斯州奥斯丁市2010—2012年独栋住宅的销售价格,以街道智慧步行指数(Street Smart Walk Score)和人行道密度(Sidewalk Density)作为衡量指标,研究社区步行通达性对房价的影响。使用Cliff-Ord空间特征模型(即广义空间模型,General Spatial Model,或者SAC)控制空间自相关影响。结果表明：在依赖小汽车的社区通过增加设施可达性来提升步行通达性的举措并不能提高房价;增加人行道也只能最小限度地提高房价。投资社区便利设施和人行道对适宜步行社区的房价提升效果比依赖小汽车的社区显著。     

Extended bottlenecks, the fundamental relationship, and capacity drop on freeways

This paper presents evidence that the commonly used point bottleneck model is too simplistic for freeway bottlenecks, the actual mechanism appears to occur over an extended distance. We find evidence of subtle flow limiting and speed reducing phenomena more than a mile downstream of a lane drop bottleneck. These phenomena impact the fundamental relationship, FD. Close to the lane drop the free flow regime appears to come from a “parabolic” FD, but further downstream the relationship straightens to a “triangular” FD and throughput increases. We develop a theory to explain the underlying mechanisms. These insights should help resolve the decades long debate about the shape of the FD. The phenomena also provide a mechanism that may contribute to the empirically observed capacity drop often seen at bottlenecks. Although we study a lane drop, this work should be transferable to other bottlenecks where the capacity restriction persists for an extended distance, e.g., a corridor with a fixed number of lanes and an on-ramp bottleneck.     

'Government preference' and its influence on the shipping industry in Korea

The author suggests the existence of 'government preference', which has changed the structure of the Korean economy from that of a light-goods industry to one of a heavy and chemical goods industry; and which has affected the formation of an export-dependent economy. 'Government preference' has also affected the shipping sector which was favoured as a foreign-exchange earner, not as an income generator. Korean shipping expanded through market forces in its earlier developmental stage where tonnage of the Korean fleet grew moderately and profitability was reasonably good; and by 'government preference' towards shipping externalities (balance-of-payments effect and support for export industry) which became a prime concern of the government in later years where the fleet expanded rapidly in spite of negative profitability. It follows that under circumstances of 'government preference' which is strong enough to work and which prefers shipping's external effect to value added generated by shipping. Korean shipping might well record a poor performance in terms of profitability. This means that Korean shipping companies' prime concern lies in 'survival' not in 'profit'.     

A combined land use-transportation model when zonal travel demand is endogenously determined

A combined transportation-land use model is proposed in this paper. Unlike other existing urban land use and transportation planning models in which a “fixed demand” for services is assumed to be known at the zonal level of an urban area, zonal travel demand is endogenously determined together with link congestion costs, optimal amounts of production and resulting efficient densities of land uses, once the transportation network is given. Some characteristics of alternative solutions are demonstrated. The proposed model represents progress over previous efforts in combining land use-transportation problems since the travel choice as to origin, destination and routes as well as amounts of goods to be produced at the optimal density of land uses are integrated into a consistent mathematical programming framework.     

Fatigue analysis for a multi-lap spot welded joint of high strength steel using quasi static tensile-shear test

The welding quality of spot weldment is an important factor that significantly affects the strength, stiffness, safety, and other performance characteristics of vehicles. Therefore, quality control and fatigue life evaluation of spot weldment are necessary processes. This paper presents a method for determining the fatigue life of multi-lap spot weldment of a high strength steel sheet. In this method, the fatigue life is estimated using the lethargy coefficient, which is the total defect coefficient according to rupture stress and time obtained by the quasi static tensile-shear test. The DC potential drop method was used to check initiation and propagation of cracks in addition to the test. Also, in this study, we modified the lethargy coefficient by using the welding current. Furthermore, we define a specific lapping constant, which is a characteristic constant of 2 or 3 lap weldments. The fatigue life obtained by the fatigue estimate equation, which contains a specific lapping constant was compared and verified with an experimental value. Finally we analyzed the relation of lap number, welding current and fatigue life. This method can save processing time and cost for predicting the life cycle of a structure.     

Design of a forced control system for a dynamic road simulator using QFT

This paper presents the road simulator control technology for reproducing a road input signal to implement real road data. The simulator consists of a hydraulic pump, a servo valve, a hydraulic actuator and its control equipment. QFT (Quantitative Control Theory) is utilized to control the simulator effectively. The control system illustrates a tracking performance of the closed-loop controller with a low order transfer function G(s) and a pre-filter F(s) for a parametric uncertainty model. A force controller is designed to communicate the control signal between the simulator and digital controller. Tracking specification is satisfied with upper and lower bound tolerances on the steep response of the system to the reference signal. The efficacy of the QFT force controller is verified through the numerical simulation in which combined dynamics and actuation of the hydraulic servo system are tested. The simulation results show that the proposed control technique works well under an uncertain hydraulic plant system. The conventional software (Labview) is used to make up for the real controller on a real-time basis, and the experimental works show that the proposed algorithm works well for a single road simulator.