Liner shipping service optimisation with reefer containers capacity: an application to northern Europe–South America trade

Increasing the number of vessels in a container liner service while reducing speeds, known as slow steaming strategy, has been a short-term response since 2008 to the challenges of over-capacity and the rise in bunker prices faced by shipping lines. This strategy, which reduces the fuel cost per voyage but increases the operating costs as more vessels are added to the service, is difficult to sustain when the transit time significantly affects the transportation demand. This article proposes a model applied to this situation, referred to as a case of optimal speed under semi-elastic demand, for which containerised perishable product transport is sensitive to time, while frozen and dry products are not. It investigates if slow steaming is still optimal when working to maximise the total profit on the cycle. In order to demonstrate the proposed model, a numerical application is carried out for a direct Northern Europe to East Coast of South America container service, a route selected due to the high volume of fresh products. For this application, the speed that maximises the total profit with inelastic and semi-elastic demand is then estimated for several bunker fuel prices.     

3D numerical modeling of wave forces on tandem fixed cylinders using the BEM

In this paper a 3D numerical model was developed to study the complicated interaction between waves and a set of tandem fixed cylinders.The fluid was considered to be inviscid and irrotational.Therefore,the Helmholtz equation was used as a governing equation.The boundary element method（BEM） was adopted to discretize the relevant equations.Open boundaries were used in far fields of the study domain.Linear waves were generated and propagated towards tandem fixed cylinders to estimate the forces applied on them.Special attention was paid to consideration of the effect on varying non-dimensional cylinder radius and distance between cylinders,ka and kd on forces and trapped modes.The middle cylinder wave forces and trapped modes in a set of nine tandem cylinders were validated utilizing analytical data.The comparisons confirm the accuracy of the model.The results of the inline wave force estimation on n tandem cylinders show that the critical cylinder in the row is the middle one for odd numbers of cylinders.Furthermore the results show that the critical trapped mode effect occurs for normalized cylinder radiuses close to 0.5 and 1.0.Finally the force estimation for n tandem cylinders confirms that force amplitude of the middle cylinder versus normalized separation distance fluctuates about that of a single cylinder.     

A Quantitative Analysis of the Performance of Transportation Projects in Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a detailed quantitative analysis of performance metrics of a sample consisting of 89 transportation projects sponsored by the World Bank. The sample and a subset consisting of 65 projects were evaluated using the performance metrics of project cost, schedule and scope. The effect of project size (dollar value) and project duration on performance metrics was investigated. Also, the achievement of project goals and potential improvement in planning and estimating over time (the learning effect) was studied. It was found that, in general, in transportation projects sponsored by the World Bank, costs are overestimated and schedules are optimistic. The outcome with respect to cost seems counter‐intuitive because previous work by other researchers had shown a systematic underestimation of project costs. There is significant evidence that there are no efficient controls in place to predict or prevent schedule delays. The study also showed that during the past 15 years, no improvement (learning effect) was evident in project cost and duration estimation as the level of accuracy has not changed significantly. Further, it is observed that project duration did not affect the performance with respect to cost and delay.     

A Multiple Criteria Decision‐Making Approach for Prioritizing Accident Hotspots in the Absence of Crash Data

Abstract

In an efficient transportation system, traffic safety is an important issue and it is influenced by many factors. In a country like Iran, until now safety improvements are mainly concentrated on road engineering activities, without much attention for vehicle technology or driving behaviour. One important aspect of road safety engineering activities is the so‐called treatment of hotspots or dangerous accident locations. Until recently, accident hotspots were identified and remedied by the esxperts’ personal judgements and a handful of statistics without taking into account other important factors such as geometric and traffic conditions of the road network. This paper therefore aims to define and identify the criteria for accident hotspots, then giving a value to each criterion in order to develop a model to prioritize accident hotspots when traffic accident data is not available. To do this, the ‘Delphi’ method has been adopted and a prioritization model is produced by the use of a ‘Multiple Criteria Decision‐Making’ method. The procedure is illustrated on a collection of 20 road sections in Iran. In addition, the model is validated against an existing database of road sections containing safe locations and hotspots. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is carried out on the proposed method.     

Modeling of Double Lane Change Maneuver of Vehicles

Lane change maneuver is one of most riskiest driving tasks. In order to increase the safety level of the vehicles during this maneuver, design of lane change assist systems which are based on dynamics behavior of driver-vehicle unit is necessary. Therefore, modeling of the maneuver is the first step to design the driver assistance system. In this paper, a novel method for modeling of lateral motion of vehicles in the standard double-lane-change (DLC) maneuver is proposed. A neuro-fuzzy model is suggested consisting of both the vehicle orientation and its lateral position. The inputs of the model are the current orientation, lateral position and steering wheel angle, while the predicted lateral position and orientation of the vehicle are the outputs. The efficiency of the proposed method is verified using both simulation results and experimental tests. The simulation and experimental maneuvers are performed in different velocities. It is shown that the proposed method can effectively reduce the undesirable effects of environmental disturbances and is significantly more accurate in comparisons with the results in the recent available papers. This method can be used to personalize the advanced driver assistance systems.     

Road characteristics and environment factors associated with motorcycle fatal crashes in Malaysia

This study aims to determine risk factors contributing to traffic crashes in 9,176 fatal cases involving motorcycle in Malaysia between 2010 and 2012. For this purpose, both multinomial and mixed models of motorcycle fatal crash outcome based on the number of vehicle involved are estimated. The corresponding model predicts the probability of three fatal crash outcomes: motorcycle single-vehicle fatal crash, motorcycle fatal crash involving another vehicle and motorcycle fatal crash involving two or more vehicles. Several road characteristic and environmental factors are considered including type of road in the hierarchy, location, road geometry, posted speed limit, road marking type, lighting, time of day and weather conditions during the fatal crash. The estimation results suggest that curve road sections, no road marking, smooth, rut and corrugation of road surface and wee hours, i.e. between 00.00 am to 6 am, increase the probability of motorcycle single-vehicle fatal crashes. As for the motorcycle fatal crashes involving multiple vehicles, factors such as expressway, primary and secondary roads, speed limit more than 70 km/h, roads with non-permissible marking, i.e. double lane line and daylight condition are found to cause an increase the probability of their occurrence. The estimation results also suggest that time of day (between 7 pm to 12 pm) has an increasing impact on the probability of motorcycle single-vehicle fatal crashes and motorcycle fatal crashes involving two or more vehicles. Whilst the multinomial logit model was found as more parsimonious, the mixed logit model is likely to capture the unobserved heterogeneity in fatal motorcycle crashes based on the number of vehicles involved due to the underreporting data with two random effect parameters including 70 km/h speed limit and double lane line road marking.     

Robustness of autonomous underwater vehicle control in variable working conditions

The performance of the control systems of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in the presence of parameter variations was studied. With an AUV working at different operating speeds and in different ocean environments, the physical parameters such as speed, hydrodynamic coefficients, or inertias may be perturbed from their nominal values. The vehicle control systems can be modeled as systems with parameter uncertainty. An existing robust control method, which uses the robustness properties of polynomials, was used for this system to calculate the permissible ranges of variation in the parameters. The method was applied to the Naval Postgraduate School AUV II and the results were verified by simulating the motion control of the vehicle under the influence of parameter perturbations.     

Normal and risky driving patterns identification in clear and rainy weather on freeway segments using vehicle kinematics trajectories and time series cluster analysis

Enhancing traffic safety on freeways is the main goal for all transportation agencies. However, to achieve this goal, many analysis protocols of network screening models need to be improved through considering human factors while analyzing traffic data. This paper introduces one on the new analysis protocol of identifying and discriminating between normal and risky driving in clear and rainy weather. The introduced analysis protocol will consider the effect of human factors on updating the networking screening process of identifying hotspots of crash risk. This paper employs the Second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) data to investigate the behavior of normal and risky driving under both rainy and clear weather conditions. Near-crash events on freeways, which were used as Surrogate Measure of Safety (SMoS) for crash risk, were identified based on the changes in vehicle kinematics, including speed, longitudinal and lateral acceleration and deceleration rates, and yaw rates. Through a trajectory-level data analysis, there were significant differences in driving patterns between rainy and clear weather conditions; factors that affected crash risk mainly included driver reaction and response time, their evasive maneuvers such as changes in acceleration rates and yaw rates, and lane-changing maneuvers. A cluster analysis method was employed to classify driving patterns into two clusters: normal and risky driving condition patterns, respectively. Statistical results showed that risky driving patterns started on average one second earlier in rainy weather conditions than in clear weather conditions. Furthermore, risky driving patterns extended in average three seconds in rainy weather conditions, while it was two seconds in clear weather conditions. The identification of these patterns is considered as a primary step towards an automated development that would distinguish between different driving patterns in a Connected Vehicle CV environment using Basic Safety Messages (BSM) and to enhance the network screening analysis for increased crash risk hotspots.     

��·����������ͨ������Ӱ�����

通行能力预测是公路设施规划、设计与运营中的基础环节.本文基于埃及曼努菲亚省12条农村双车道路段数据,研究了公路线形等几何特征对通行能力的影响以及线形由切线变为平曲线时通行能力的损失.所选取的路段线形包括直线和随后的平曲线.同时,采集了各路段上车流量及速度数据,利用基于基本图的外推法研究流量和密度关系.路段上不同车型的车辆均转换为小客车当量.此外,针对不同情形（切线、平曲线及对应流量损失）,分别建立了最佳回归模型.结果表明,切线型道路的关键自变量是路宽、肩宽以及切线长;平曲线道路的关键变量是曲线半径和路宽.通行能力和几何特征关系最佳模型的自变量为曲线半径.本文的模型可用于分析评价农村双车道道路的通行能力,尤其是评价文中所研究路段的通行能力.     

Robust aspects in dependable filter design for alignment of a submarine inertial navigation system

The strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) is able to provide continuous estimates of a vehicle??s velocity, position and attitude. As a rule, the SIMS component known as a high accuracy strapdown inertial measurement unit (SIMU) is an exceptionally expensive system. Less expensive SIMUs comprised of low cost sensors suffer from degraded performance, but this can be compensated for, in part, by addition of a velocity data recorder (VDR) to accompany the SINS. In this configuration, the need frequently arises to align the SINS of a submarine to in order to avoid a long run-up of the inertial system before a start command is issued. This in-motion alignment (IMA) can be accomplished by integrating SINS data with some external aiding source, such as the VDR, by using some form of measurement matching method. Accordingly, this paper demonstrates a consistent IMA scheme for a low-cost SIMU using a robust Kalman/ $ H_{\infty } $ filter structure. An error model of the SINS is derived in which the state vector includes attitude, velocity, position and sensor errors. Velocity information from the VDR is used as a measurement to the proposed filter. All significant equations concerning navigation are presented in conjunction with argument. Results show the advantages of the approach and emphasize diverse aspects of the SINS.