An activity-based approach of investigating travel behaviour of older people

The paper presents the results of an investigation on daily activity-travel scheduling behaviour of older people by using an advanced econometric model and a household travel survey, collected in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Canada in 2011. The activity-travel scheduling model considers a dynamic time–space constrained scheduling process. The key contribution of the paper is to reveal daily activity-travel scheduling behaviour through a comprehensive econometric framework. The resulting empirical model reveals many behavioural details. These include the role that income plays in moderating out-of-home time expenditure choices of older people. Older people in the highest and lowest income categories tend to have lower variations in time expenditure choices than those in middle-income categories. Overall, the time expenditure choices become more stable with increasing age, indicating that longer activity durations and lower activity frequency become more prevalent with increasing age. Daily activity type and location choices reveal a clear random utility-maximizing rational behaviour of older people. It is clear that increasing spatial accessibility to various activity locations is a crucial factor in defining daily out-of-home activity participation of older people. It is also clear that the diversity of out-of-home activity type choices reduces with increasing age and older people are more sensitive to auto travel time than to transit or non-motorized travel time.     

Bicycle mode share in China: a city-level analysis of long term trends

In the past 15 years, cities in China have experienced big changes in socioeconomic and traffic conditions, resulting in a long term change in bicycle use. This study aims to quantify the changes in bicycle mode share in Chinese cities and explore the potential causes. Based on data from 51 cities, it is found that bicycle mode share at the city level decreased gradually in the past. Conventional bicycle mode share decreased with a rate of 3 % per year, but electric bicycle mode share increased with a rate of 2 % per year. The correlations between city features such as demographics and built environments and bicycle mode share at different city sizes are compared. The generalized linear models are estimated to relate the changes in the share of different trip modes to various city-level factors. The results show that the bicycle mode share in a city is impacted by factors including city area size, population density, number of cars, percentage of local road mileage among all roads, and trip purpose. Possible reasons for the changes in bicycle uses in Chinese cities are explored and policy implications are discussed.     

Cost and time damping: evidence from aggregate rail direct demand models

There is a significant body of evidence from both disaggregate choice modelling literature and practical travel demand forecasting that the responsiveness to cost and possibly to time diminishes with journey length. This has, in Britain at least, been termed ‘Cost Damping’, and is recognised in guidance issued by the UK Department for Transport. However, the consistency of the effect across modes and data types has not been established. Cost damping, if it exists, affects both the forecasting of demand and our understanding of behaviour. This paper aims to investigate the evidence for cost and time damping in rail demand using aggregate rail ticket sales data. The rail ticket sales data in Britain has, for many years, formed the basis of analysis of a wide range of impacts of rail demand. It records the number of tickets sold between station pairs, and it is generally felt to provide a reasonably accurate reflection of travel demand. However, the consistency of these direct demand models with choice modelling and highway demand model structures has not been investigated. Rail direct demand models estimated by ticket sales data indicate only slight variation in the fare elasticity with distance, as is evidenced in the largest meta-analysis of price elasticities conducted to date (Wardman in J Transp Econ Policy 48(3):367–384, 2014). This study of UK elasticities shows strong variation between urban and inter-urban trips, presumably a segmentation at least in part by purpose, but less remaining variation by trip length. A lack of variation by length supports the hypothesis of cost damping, because constant cost sensitivity would imply that fare elasticity would increase strongly with distance, because of the increasing impact of higher fares at longer distances. In this paper we indicate that rail direct demand models have some consistency of behavioural paradigm with utility based choice models used in highway planning. We go on to use rail demand data to estimate time and fare elasticities in the context of various cost damping functions. Our empirical contribution is to estimate time elasticities on a basis directly comparable with cost elasticities and to show that the phenomenon of cost damping is strongly present in ticket sales data. This finding implies that cost damping should be included in models intended for multimodal analysis, which may otherwise give incorrect predictions.     

Isolating high-priority metro and feeder bus transfers using smart card data

Fixed-rail metro (or ‘subway’) infrastructure is generally unable to provide access to all parts of the city grid. Consequently, feeder bus lines are an integral component of urban mass transit systems. While passengers prefer a seamless transfer between these two distinct transportation services, each service’s operations are subject to a different set of factors that contribute to metro-bus transfer delay. Previous attempts to understand transfer delay were limited by the availability of tools to measure the time and cost associated with passengers’ transfer experience. This paper uses data from smart card systems, an emerging technology that automatically collects passenger trip data, to understand transfer delay. The primary objective of this study is to use smart card data to derive a reproducible methodology that isolates high priority transfer points between the metro system and its feeder-bus systems. The paper outlines a methodology to identify transfer transactions in the smart card dataset, estimate bus headways without the aid of geographic location information, estimate three components of the total transfer time (walking time, waiting time, and delay time), and isolate high-priority transfer pairs. The paper uses smart card data from Nanjing, China as a case study. The results isolate eight high priority metro-bus transfer pairs in the Nanjing metro system and finally, offers several targeted measures to improve transfer efficiency.     

对公路路基路面工程安全设计的相关分析

如果公路存在路基质量不合格、路面断裂等问题,可能会直接影响驾驶的安全性,严重削弱公路自身所具有的交通功能,所以在进行公路路基路面工程设计的过程中,要着重考虑安全问题,有意识的通过优化设计将安全隐患降至最低。在此背景下,本文针对公路路基路面工程的安全设计问题展开研究,为公路设计工作的开展提供参考。     

间隙单元在独立舱式液货船强度计算中的应用

独立舱式液货船一般采用垂向支撑垫块连接独立舱和主船体结构。针对某型独立舱式液货船,采用通用的NASTRAN间隙单元来模拟各种装载工况下垂向垫块的支撑作用,并将计算结果与常规做法采用的杆单元模拟结果进行了比较,表明了在独立舱式液货船的直接计算中采用间隙单元模拟垂向支撑垫块的可行性和准确性,同时也能够提高计算效率。研究了间隙单元刚度对计算结果的影响,结论是垫块的刚度整体提高对支反力的影响较小,整体降低对支反力影响较大。     

油船底边舱下折角结构加强多方案优化设计

协调共同规范(CSR-H)对油船货舱区底边舱下折角细网格直接强度分析和精细网格疲劳强度分析提出了强制要求。以某大型油船货舱底边舱下折角有限元计算为例,探讨了四种货舱区底边舱下折角结构加强方案,为后续符合CSR-H规范的油船底边舱下折角结构设计提供参考。     

锂离子电池电极/电解液界面膜研究进展

电极/电解液界面膜(通常也称为固体电解质界面膜或SEI膜)是指电极与电解液界面通过电化学和化学反应生成的一种界面膜,界面膜的稳定性对电池循环寿命和安全性至关重要。本文简述了电极/电解液界面膜的研究进展,重点介绍了电极/电解液界面膜的研究历史、形成机理以及相关表征技术的发展,并对电极/电解液界面膜的研究方向作了进一步展望。     

铝合金耐压结构设计分析与试验验证

根据水下潜器总体性能要求,按照最小重量原则,结合规范和有限元方法设计工作潜深为500m的铝合金带加强筋形式的圆柱耐压舱,并通过压力筒加压试验,对Ansys有限元静力分析的精确度进行了验证,为耐压结构设计与校核提供重要参考.     

Analysis of unsteady flow over Offshore Wind Turbine in combination with different types of foundations

Environmental effects have an important influence on Offshore Wind Turbine (OWT) power generation efficiency and the structural stability of such turbines. In this study, we use an in-house Boundary Element (BEM)—panMARE code—to simulate the unsteady flow behavior of a full OWT with various combinations of aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loads in the time domain. This code is implemented to simulate potential flows for different applications and is based on a three-dimensional first-order panel method. Three different OWT configurations consisting of a generic 5 MW NREL rotor with three different types of foundations (Monopile, Tripod, and Jacket) are investigated. These three configurations are analyzed using the RANSE solver which is carried out using ANSYS CFX for validating the corresponding results. The simulations are performed under the same environmental atmospheric wind shear and rotor angular velocity, and the wave properties are wave height of 4 m and wave period of 7.16 s. In the present work, wave environmental effects were investigated firstly for the two solvers, and good agreement is achieved. Moreover, pressure distribution in each OWT case is presented, including detailed information about local flow fields. The time history of the forces at inflow direction and its moments around the mudline at each OWT part are presented in a dimensionless form with respect to the mean value of the last three loads and the moment amplitudes obtained from the BEM code, where the contribution of rotor force is lower in the tripod case and higher in the jacket case and the calculated hydrodynamic load that effect on jacket foundation type is lower than other two cases.