Maritime accident investigation and temporal determinants of maritime accidents: A case study

This paper presents the results of an investigation into temporal determinants of maritime accidents based on a data-set obtained from the proceedings of formal inquiries in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The results show that there is no statistically significant outcome between the probability for an accident and the time of watch. Thus the results do not confirm previous studies, which reported significant time of day effects.The outcome of this study indicates that marine inquiries can provide useful data for an analysis of underlying causes of maritime accidents. It is suggested that accident inquiries should be extended into the area of watch systems employed and should record the hours of work and of rest of the officers on the watch involved in a maritime accident.     

The role of professional associations in shipping

This article is in three parts. The first covers the historical development of qualifying associations. The second covers the particular role of maritime institutions that include The Royal Institution of Naval Architects, The Institute of Marine Engineering Science and Technology and The Nautical Institute. The third and final section considers the future for maritime professional associations in the context of international shipping.     

The design of bus route systems — An interactive location-allocation approach

An interactive modelling approach is developed to solve the practical problem of bus route network design. Possible bus routes are identified with facilities which can be located. Zones or pairs of zones in the urban area are identified with customers who will be allocated to the established facilities. It is shown that the classical Set Covering Problem is useful under the assumption of fixed demand; the Simple Plant Location Problem is effective under the assumption of demand which is sensitive to the level of bus service provided.     

Hub location with flow economies of scale

A characteristic feature of hub and spoke networks is the bundling of flows on the interhub links. This agglomeration of flows leads to reduced travel costs across the interhub links. Current models of hub location do not adequately model the scale economies of flow that accrue due to the agglomeration of flows. This paper shows that current hub location models, by assuming flow-independent costs, not only miscalculate total network cost, but may also erroneously select optimal hub locations and allocations. The model presented in this paper more explicitly models the scale economies that are generated on the interhub links and in doing so provides a more reliable model representation of the reality of hub and spoke networks.     

浅析连续箱梁设计中的几个问题

结合工程实际,对连续箱梁设计计算中常遇到的几个棘手问题进行定量分析,并给出工程中实际可用的计算方法。     

Magnetic field tuning characteristics of bimodal ultrasonic motor stator

The magnetic field tuning characteristics of an ultrasonic motor (USM) stator are discussed. The stator consists of two piezoelectric ceramic transducer (PZT) plates and one sandwiched-in Terfenol-D plate. The dimensions of the stator are carefully adjusted to specifically discuss the influence of the magnetic field on the frequency difference between the longitudinal and bending modes of the stator. The frequency difference discussed in this paper is usually small and mainly caused by uneven materials, machining errors and changes in external conditions (temperature, pre-stress or load). The longitudinal and bending modes of the stator are simultaneously excited by an external electric field to generate the elliptic motion trajectories of the driving points. A direct current (DC) magnetic field is applied to decrease the difference between the two mode frequencies of the fabricated stator. In experiments, the dependences of the two mode frequencies and their difference on DC magnetic fields are all investigated. The experimental results indicate that the difference between the longitudinal and bending mode frequencies of the PZT/Terfenol-D/PZT composite stator can be tuned by changing the intensity of the external DC magnetic field.     

Sensorimotor self-learning model based on operant conditioning for two-wheeled robot

Traditional control methods of two-wheeled robot are usually model-based and require the robot’s precise mathematic model which is hard to get. A sensorimotor self-learning model named SMM TWR is presented in this paper to handle these problems. The model consists of seven elements: the discrete learning time set, the sensory state set, the motion set, the sensorimotor mapping, the state orientation unit, the learning mechanism and the model’s entropy. The learning mechanism for SMM TWR is designed based on the theory of operant conditioning (OC), and it adjusts the sensorimotor mapping at every learning step. This helps the robot to choose motions. The leaning direction of the mechanism is decided by the state orientation unit. Simulation results show that with the sensorimotor model designed, the robot is endowed the abilities of self-learning and self-organizing, and it can learn the skills to keep itself balance through interacting with the environment.     

Approximate method for reliability assessment of complex phased mission systems

Phased-mission systems (PMSs) have wide applications in engineering practices, such as manmade satellites. Certain critical parts in the system, such as cold standby, hot standby and functional standby, are designed in redundancy architecture to achieve high reliability performance. State-space models such as Markov process have been used extensively in previous studies for reliability evaluation of PMSs with dynamic behaviors. The most popular way to deal with the dynamic behaviors is Markov process, but it is well known that Markov process is limited to exponential distribution. In practice, however, the lifetime of most machinery products can follow non-exponential distributions like the Weibull distribution which cannot be handled by the Markov process. In order to solve this kind of problem, we present a semi-Markov model combined with an approximation algorithm to analyze PMS reliability subjected to non-exponential failures. Furthermore, the accuracy of the approximation algorithm is investigated by comparing to an accurate solution, and a typical PMS (attitude and orbit control system) is analyzed to demonstrate the implementation of the method.     

Design of car battery protection device based on torsion spring

In recent years, electric vehicles are developing rapidly in automotive industry. When involved in accidents, if the batteries of electric cars break, it is likely to cause a short circuit and start a fire. Aimed at this issue, a car battery protection device based on torsion spring has been designed. The car battery protection device can deform in a particular pattern in a collision accident. Impact energy of the accident is absorbed by the deformation, which can significantly reduce impact force on the batteries. Meanwhile, based on the principle of maximum energy absorption, some crucial parameters of the device can be determined. Furthermore, an impact simulation conducted on ANSYS software shows that maximum safety factors can be obtained when the material of car battery protection device is carbon steel. The analysis of “safe space” in the car battery protection device shows that the device can prevent battery damage effectively in general circumstances, which means the reliability of the device has been verified. Therefore, when applied to electric vehicles, the car battery protection device, which can prevent secondary accidents, significantly improves the vehicle security in accidents.