The rapid development of autonomous vehicles (AV) in recent years has drawn the attention of numerous countries in terms of its feasibility for use and deployment as individually-owned vehicles or for large-scale fleet planning and deployment as a mobility-on-demand (MOD) service. Singapore is no exception to this global trend and in her pursuit to be smart and car-lite, numerous efforts are made to have AV trials in place and test out their potential deployment in the city state. As one of the many prerequisites of AV planning, public perception on AV plays a vital role when designing any potential AV deployment scheme. As such, a stated preference survey comprising both online survey and field interviews/surveys, was performed island-wide to understand how commuters in Singapore perceive about different AV-based MOD modes. The logit kernel model is adopted to determine how different preference attributes and key demographic indicators can affect the use of AV-based MOD services over other existing first- and last-mile connection modes. The model results have identified how demographics such as gender, age, housing type, education level and income level can influence the travel mode choice. Also, the impacts brought by individuals’ stated preferences over convenience, privacy and familiarity of ride-hailing apps are also investigated. Such findings can provide useful insight in planning future car-lite towns and implementing AV-based MOD services in these towns.
The interaction mechanism of three types of vena cava filters (VCFs) with blood vessels and their influence on the bloodstream during the process of implantation are investigated by finite element method and computational fluid dynamics. The VCF models are set up with Solidworks software. Using ABAQUS software, we simulate the working conditions of the VCFs in the vessel to analyze the stress distribution and radial support stiffness of the vessel wall and the filter surface. Using FLUENT software, we simulate and analyze the velocity, pressure and shear stress distributions of blood flow when the VCFs are at their working conditions. For the retrievable VCF (R-VCF), the peak stress at the working conditions of the VCF is the highest, the peak stress toward the vessel wall is the lowest, and the support stiffness is the lowest. For the permanent VCF (P-VCF), the peak stress at the working conditions of the VCF is the highest, the peak stress toward the vessel wall is the lowest, and the support stiffness is the highest. Because of the structure of scaffolding support units and the tendency to form intimal hyperplasia on their support units, both the convertible VCF (C-VCF) and the P-VCF can embed their support units in the hyperplasia skin. This effectively prevents them from harming blood veins through filter damage at the pulse load conditions. As the biomechanical property of the C-VCF is between those of the R-VCF and the P-VCF, it has smaller obstacle to blood flow after conversion and has some fragmentation effects on the thrombus. The results show that different types of VCFs differ in their biomechanical and hemodynamic properties after implantation. Therefore, the simulative analysis can provide a reference basis for filter design and clinical decision making. 相似文献
