A frequency-based maritime container assignment model

This paper transfers the classic frequency-based transit assignment method of Spiess and Florian to containers demonstrating its promise as the basis for a global maritime container assignment model. In this model, containers are carried by shipping lines operating strings (or port rotations) with given service frequencies. An origin–destination matrix of full containers is assigned to these strings to minimize sailing time plus container dwell time at the origin port and any intermediate transhipment ports. This necessitated two significant model extensions. The first involves the repositioning of empty containers so that a net outflow of full containers from any port is balanced by a net inflow of empty containers, and vice versa. As with full containers, empty containers are repositioned to minimize the sum of sailing and dwell time, with a facility to discount the dwell time of empty containers in recognition of the absence of inventory. The second involves the inclusion of an upper limit to the maximum number of container moves per unit time at any port. The dual variable for this constraint provides a shadow price, or surcharge, for loading or unloading a container at a congested port. Insight into the interpretation of the dual variables is given by proposition and proof. Model behaviour is illustrated by a simple numerical example. The paper concludes by considering the next steps toward realising a container assignment model that can, amongst other things, support the assessment of supply chain vulnerability to maritime disruptions.     

Design and evaluation of an integrated inventory and transportation system

This paper proposes the adoption of an integrated inventory and transportation system (IITS) to minimize the total costs of inventory and transportation. A non-linear programing is developed by analyzing transportation and inventory costs with one supplier and many retailers in the distribution environment. The paper compares the proposed model with the traditional approach in computing total costs with numerical data. The results indicate that the total costs can be optimized by adopting integrated programing rather than the traditional approach, along with achieving improved customer service levels. In particular, sensitivity analysis is applied to determine the performance of the IITS under various transportation costs, holding costs and shortage costs. It shows that the transportation cost per unit is most sensitive in the proposed model. In this situation, the IITS is more effective for cost saving when set-up cost, holding and shortage costs are high, but is less effective for situations involving high per-unit transportation costs.     

Optimization of transport investment and pricing policies: the role of transport pricing in network design

This paper investigates the role of transport pricing in network design and describes two facts about flow pattern in a transportation system. The first, illustrated by an example of Braess paradox, is that adding a new link to the network does not necessarily minimize the total travel time. The second is that introducing of appropriate toll pricing may reduce not only the total network time but also the travel time for each individual traveller. It follows with the investigations of different system objectives and different pricing policies (only toll pricing and distance‐based pricing are considered), and shows how they affect the system performance and flow pattern. Lastly, a systematic optimization process is proposed for integrated planning of transport network and pricing policies.     

Modeling the interactions between car and bicycle in heterogeneous traffic

In this paper, a new cellular automata model is proposed to simulate the car and bicycle heterogeneous traffic on urban road. To capture the complex interactions between these two types of vehicles, a novel occupancy rule is adopted in the proposed model to consider the variable lateral distances of mixed vehicular traffic. Based on massive simulations, microscopic fundamental diagrams under different bicycle densities are devised. With these, the bicycle's spilling behavior is then investigated and discussed. In order to reflect the interference of a bicycle on a car, the interference transformation from friction state to block state is modeled explicitly. Finally, different simulation results under different occupancy rules indicate that the constant and fixed occupancy rule adopted in the previous studies might lead to overestimation of car flux in the heterogeneous traffic flows with different bicycle densities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of the oil crisis on the growth in the ownership and use of cars

Since the oil crisis of 1973, a number of studies have been made in various countries of the effects of the rise in petrol prices on the level of traffic flow, but rather fewer have attempted to delineate the complex chain of reactions within the car market set off by this impulse. We attempt to do this, using data from the UK.Since 1966 during the prediction stage of the first London Transportation Study it became obvious that low income and high income households had different rates of growth of car ownership, mainly because low income households bought cheap, old cars which vary in quantity and price differently from expensive, new cars. The Greater London Council therefore sponsored a study of car prices by age and size, starting from 1957 annually, and since the oil crisis, evaluated monthly. This has enabled us to examine the strong change in trend that had occurred, with large cars depreciating 15% per annum more than the smallest. The quantities of cars of each size registered each month are available from national statistics and this enables us to say that the previous 1% per annum increase in car size was arrested, with new cars becoming substantially smaller.A model of the car market has been developed which relates on the one hand the price distribution of cars by age, and on the other hand the price. distribution of the stock of cars owned at each household income level. Via the expenditure on car purchase at each household income level and the distribution of the length of time between purchase and resale of cars, a fully dynamic model has been developed to relate expenditure flow and stock. This enables us to test the effect of different trends on the dynamic equilibrium in the car market.The implications of the two trends noted above on the prediction of future car ownership growth are discussed, with the standstill since the oil crisis attributed to petrol prices via the split in household expenditure between purchase and use.     

Cooperation in transit delivery in West German metropolitan areas

West Germany is densely populated, averaging 245 inhabitants/km², but varying widely between urban agglomerations and rural areas. Transport volume has increased by 40% since 1970, with virtually all growth due to private automobiles. Since 1981 public transit has been suffering from decreasing demand.A 1964 Expert's Report to the German federal government was the stimulus for initiating an effective funding mechanism for new public transit construction. In 1965 Germany's first federated transit authority was founded for the region of Hamburg.Principal among the goals of any cooperative agreement among transit companies are improvements for the passengers and improvement of revenues for the companies. To attain these ends, two distinct forms of transit aggrements have been developed in Germany: transit cooperative (Verkehrsgemeinschaft) and transit federation (Verkehrsverbund). The former is more suitable for smaller to medium-sized towns, while the latter is more suitable for larger cities. The two types are described in this article.German transit federations during the 1970s succeeded in significantly increasing ridership, while during the 1980s patronage has either remained steady or has declined. Yet transit federations showed much better perfomance than did public transit in general. In terms of costs and revenues, no public transit organization in Germany is able to break even; deficits vary between 42% and 55%. The author concludes, however, that hidden subsidies for automobile traffic are far higher, because of environmental damage and the high social cost of traffic accidents.     

养生作用对硫沥青性能影响分析

硫磺部分替代传统石油沥青用于道路工程建设可减少石油沥青用量,降低施工能源消耗,促进工业废渣中硫磺的回收利用,具有较高的经济和环保价值。为探究硫磺掺量（质量分数）及养生作用对硫沥青（SEA）性能的影响,采用差示扫描量热仪（DSC）验证硫沥青中硫磺的重结晶现象,对养生前后硫沥青的基本物理性能和黏度进行分析,并采用动态剪切流变仪（DSR）和弯曲梁流变仪（BBR）对养生前后硫沥青的流变特性和疲劳性能进行评价,最后借助荧光显微镜（FM）观察养生前、后硫磺在沥青中的微观分布特性。研究结果表明：养生后高硫磺掺量的硫沥青DSC曲线出现吸热峰,硫沥青（特别是高硫磺掺量下）的劲度有所增加,因此对硫沥青进行养生使其性能稳定后再进行相关性能评价更具现实意义;硫磺掺量较低（≤ 10%）时,硫磺主要以溶解硫的形式存在于沥青中起到软化沥青的作用,因此沥青的低温变形能力有所改善,但其高温抗变形能力有所降低;当硫磺掺量较高（≥ 35%）时,硫磺主要以重结晶的形式悬浮在沥青中使沥青变硬,在增加沥青高温抗变形能力的同时也牺牲了其低温抗裂能力;硫磺掺量较低时,硫沥青黏度随着硫磺掺量的增加而降低;硫磺掺量较高时,硫沥青90℃和105℃黏度随着硫磺掺量的增加而增加,但硫沥青120℃和135℃黏度相差不大,同时硫磺加入最高可降低沥青的施工温度达20℃;线性振幅扫描（LAS）试验结果表明,养生后的硫沥青疲劳寿命比基质沥青长,其中35%硫沥青疲劳性能最佳;硫磺掺量进一步增加,硫沥青疲劳寿命缩短至与基质沥青相近;FM分析表明,硫磺掺量不高于5%时,硫磺全部溶解于沥青中,且养生后硫磺未重结晶,相应硫沥青无荧光性;硫磺掺量高于5%时,硫磺在沥青中分布均匀,养生后10%硫沥青中硫晶斑尺寸和面积显著增大,高硫磺掺量硫沥青中硫晶斑面积仅略有增加。     

An adaptive lateral preview driver model

Successful modelling and simulation of driver behaviour is important for the current industrial thrust of computer-based vehicle development. The main contribution of this paper is the development of an adaptive lateral preview human driver model. This driver model template has a few parameters that can be adjusted to simulate steering actions of human drivers with different driving styles. In other words, this model template can be used in the design process of vehicles and active safety systems to assess their performance under average drivers as well as atypical drivers. We assume that the drivers, regardless of their style, have driven the vehicle long enough to establish an accurate internal model of the vehicle. The proposed driver model is developed using the adaptive predictive control (APC) framework. Three key features are included in the APC framework: use of preview information, internal model identification and weight adjustment to simulate different driving styles. The driver uses predicted vehicle information in a future window to determine the optimal steering action. A tunable parameter is defined to assign relative importance of lateral displacement and yaw error in the cost function to be optimized. The model is tuned to fit three representative drivers obtained from driving simulator data taken from 22 human drivers.     

Vibration reduction of H/Shaft using an electromagnetic damper with mode change

The objective of this study is to develop a damper that can reduce the amplitude of vibration in various frequency ranges. Previous H/Shaft vibration reduction methods work in a passive way. A dynamic damper reduces the amplitude of vibration at its first mode, but vibration still appears at the second mode. A mass damper or hollow shaft can shift the natural frequency to a lower or higher region. The fixed operating frequency prevents vibration from being reduced outside the operating frequency range. The proposed damper uses electromagnets as either masses or actuators to change the damper mode between dynamic damper mode and mass damper mode. The electromagnetic damper (EMD) can change its mode to respond to the vibration excitation at both low and high frequencies. The vibration reduction performance was evaluated by FRF tests in laboratory and vehicle conditions. The results were compared with those of a dynamic damper and indicate that the amplitude of vibration is reduced by 95.6 % when the EMD is implemented on an H/Shaft, whereas only 61.9 % vibration reduction is achieved by the dynamic damper.     

自主神经功能检测对早期糖尿病自主神经功能损害的诊断价值

目的评价自主神经功能检测对早期糖尿病自主神经功能损害的诊断价值。方法50例2型糖尿病患者进行自主神经功能检查,即交感皮肤反应和心血管自主神经功能检测,并与30名健康人进行对比分析。结果糖尿病患者自主神经功能检测中交感皮肤反应,瓦氏比值和深呼吸时心率变异与对照组比较均有显著性差异(P<0.05),三者的异常率分别为70%,46%和50%;以交感皮肤反应的异常率最高,尤其以双下肢明显。立卧位血压差和冰水试验与对照组比较无显著性差异(P>0.05),其异常率分别为12%和16%。结论检测外周器官自主神经功能状态的方法中以交感皮肤反应的阳性率最高,可以作为检测早期糖尿病自主神经功能的常规筛选检查。