Travel experience matters: Expected personal mobility impacts after simulated L3/L4 automated driving

Transportation - Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to change personal mobility in the near future. Most studies on the mobility impacts of AVs focus on fully automated (SAE L5) vehicles, but...     

特长高速公路隧道通风斜井钢波纹板式中隔墙技术研究北大核心CSCD

通风导洞中隔墙一般采用技术较为成熟的混凝土中隔墙,但存在表面粗糙、工艺复杂、施工进度不易控制等缺点,无法适用于风道较为复杂的工程。文章以东天山隧道1号斜井为依托,提出了节能型全拼装式钢波纹板中隔墙技术,通过数值模拟以及理论计算的方法验证其在单洞四风道通风斜井中的可行性。研究结果表明:钢波纹板式中隔墙增大了斜井有效通风截面积,断面风速降低约5.3%,同时大幅减小通风斜井内的沿程阻力,仅为既有混凝土墙方案的17%左右;拱顶变形及二次衬砌混凝土结构受力均远低于结构安全限值。该技术克服了传统钢筋混凝土中隔墙的缺点,在满足隧道通风防灾要求的同时,改善了隧道施工环境,且施工工期可缩短为原方案的三分之一。     

Cohort analysis of driving cessation and limitation among older adults

Automobiles are central to participation in economic, social, and cultural activities in the United States. The ability to drive as one ages is fundamental to the quality of life among older adults. Driving rates decline significantly with age. Researchers using cross-sectional data have studied the reasons former drivers have stopped driving, but few have followed individuals over time to examine changes in relationships among driving cessation, socio-demographics, and health conditions. We used longitudinal data from a national sample of 20,000 observations from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine relationships among demographic variables, health conditions, and driving reduction and driving cessation. Longitudinal data allow analysis of generational differences in behavior, a major advantage over cross-sectional data which only allow comparisons of different people at one point in time. We found, like many other studies, that personal decisions to limit and eventually stop driving vary with sex, age, and health conditions. In addition, unlike most previous studies, we also found that those relationships differ by birth cohort with younger cohorts less likely to stop and limit their driving than their older counterparts. The findings indicate an evolution in the association between driving cessation and its causes.

     

Inertia effects of past behavior in commuting modal shift behavior: interactions,variations and implications for demand estimation

Transportation - This paper focuses on empirically investigating the inertia effects of past behavior in commuting modal shift behavior and contributes to the current state of the art by three...     

贵阳岩溶地层地铁盾构隧道工程中新型球状碳化钨刀具的研究与应用北大核心CSCD

在贵阳轨道交通3号线盾构隧道施工中,采用普通刀具易出现滚刀多边形磨损、偏磨、刀刃崩裂等异常磨损和刀圈脱落现象。为改进滚刀刀圈的耐磨、耐冲击性能,提高刀具的综合寿命,提出采用球状碳化钨刀具替换普通刀具,并介绍了激光熔覆焊工艺以及宏观磨损检测工艺。经过施工现场的实际应用,发现球状碳化钨刀具具有更好的耐磨性,新型球状碳化钨刀具平均磨损量为0.00255 mm/延米,相邻普通刀具平均磨损量为0.01655 mm/延米。在第338~736环掘进中,新型球状碳化钨刀具最大磨损量为0.015 mm/延米,刀具无崩刃现象,滚刀轴承、密封等均无异常,有效解决了普通刀具易磨损、磨损不均的问题,为喀斯特地质条件下盾构刀具的选型提供参考。     

Model-Predictive Control Strategy for an Array of Wave-Energy Converters

To facilitate the commercialization of wave energy in an array or farm environment, effective control strategies for improving energy extraction efficiency of the system are important. In this paper, we develop and apply model-predictive control (MPC) to a heaving point-absorber array, where the optimization problem is cast into a convex quadratic programming (QP) formulation, which can be efficiently solved by a standard QP solver. We introduced a term for penalizing large slew rates in the cost function to ensure the convexity of this function. Constraints on both range of the states and the input capacity can be accommodated. The convex formulation reduces the computational hurdles imposed on conventional nonlinear MPC. For illustration of the control principles, a point-absorber approximation is adopted to simplify the representation of the hydrodynamic coefficients among the array by exploiting the small devices to wavelength assumption. The energy-capturing capabilities of a two-cylinder array in regular and irregular waves are investigated. The performance of the MPC for this two-WEC array is compared to that for a single WEC, and the behavior of the individual devices in head or beam wave configuration is explained. Also shown is the reactive power required by the power takeoff system to achieve the performance.

     

Challenges in Collaborative Governance for Coastal Restoration: Lessons from the Caernarvon River Diversion in Louisiana

In an effort to restore deteriorating coastal wetlands in Breton Sound, Louisiana, a diversion of Mississippi River water into the estuarine ecosystem has been operated at Caernarvon, Louisiana, since 1991. The diversion was implemented after a relatively long collaborative planning process beginning in the 1950s. The Caernarvon Interagency Advisory Committee, an official panel of stakeholders, considers scientific aspects of the freshwater inflow and stakeholder inputs in developing an operational plan, which internalizes stakeholder conflicts, while accomplishing goals of restoring the coastal ecosystem. Even though fishery representatives are committee members, local oyster fishers filed lawsuits in federal and state courts from 1994 through 2005, claiming damages to their oyster beds. These lawsuits were initially successful in state courts but were reversed by the Louisiana Supreme Court. The federal suits were unsuccessful. Following these lawsuits, voters in Louisiana in 2000 amended the State Constitution to protect coastal restoration projects against lawsuits reflecting increase in overall statewide support. Increasing scientific knowledge has contributed significantly to diversion operation. For better collaborative governance, efforts to increase common understanding among stakeholders will be needed, and a process to compensate interests of stakeholders suffering from impacts of restoration projects at an earlier stage should be institutionalized.     

Decision fusion of a multi-sensing embedded system for occupant safety measures

The need for an embedded system that can fuse incomplete, inconsistent, and imprecise decisions from several sensing systems is a crucial step in achieving an effective decision for occupant safety measures. This paper deals with the decision fusion strategies of a multi-sensing embedded system to achieve significant enhancement in the reliability of occupant safety through the fused decisions. Multi-sensing approaches to determine weight, vision, and crash sensing are developed for occupant detection, classification, position calculation, and crash detection. A rule-based decision fusion algorithm is then developed to fuse the multi-sensing decisions. The developed sensing systems are incorporated into an embedded device. To execute the embedded system, a system interface between the software and hardware is developed using Lab Window/CVI with the C programming language. The experimental results demonstrated that the real time operation of the embedded system validate the effectiveness of the decision fusion algorithm, characterize the safety measures and monitor the decision application. Several events were tested that prove the performance of the embedded system is robust towards occupant safety measures.     

Development of a microscopic activity-based framework for analyzing the potential impacts of transportation control measures on vehicle emissions

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) have defined a set of transportation control measures to counter the increase in the vehicle emissions and energy consumption due to increased travel. The value of these TCM strategies is unknown as there is limited data available to measure the travel effects of individual TCM strategies and the models are inadequate in forecasting changes in travel behavior resulting from these strategies. The work described in this paper begins to provide an operational methodology to overcome these difficulties so that the impacts of the policy mandates of both CAAA and ISTEA can be assessed. Although the framework, as currently developed, falls well short of actually forecasting changes in traveler behavior relative to policy options designed to encourage emissions reduction, the approach can be useful in estimating upper bounds of certain policy alternatives in reducing vehicle emissions. Subject to this important limitation, the potential of transportation policy options to alleviate vehicle emissions is examined in a comprehensive activity-based approach. Conclusions are drawn relative to the potential emissions savings that can be expected from efficient trip chaining behavior, ridesharing among household members, as well as from technological advances in vehicle emissions control devices represented by replacing all of the vehicles in the fleet by vehicles conforming to present-day emissions technology.     

Vehicle mass as a determinant of fuel consumption and secondary safety performance: A comment

Attention is called to evidence that in collisions between vehicles of equal mass, and in single-vehicle collisions, there is unlikely to be a very strong effect of car size on injury severity, and that variation in crashworthiness within the set of car models of a given size has a much larger effect. Consequently, the secondary safety of a national fleet of small cars in the future could be as high as that of a national fleet of large cars today.