User preferences regarding autonomous vehicles

This study gains insight into individual motivations for choosing to own and use autonomous vehicles and develops a model for autonomous vehicle long-term choice decisions. A stated preference questionnaire is distributed to 721 individuals living across Israel and North America. Based on the characteristics of their current commutes, individuals are presented with various scenarios and asked to choose the car they would use for their commute. A vehicle choice model which includes three options is estimated:

• (1)Continue to commute using a regular car that you have in your possession.
• (2)Buy and shift to commuting using a privately-owned autonomous vehicle (PAV).
• (3)Shift to using a shared-autonomous vehicle (SAV), from a fleet of on-demand cars for your commute.

A factor analysis determined five relevant latent variables describing the individuals’ attitudes: technology interest, environmental concern, enjoy driving, public transit attitude, and pro-AV sentiments. The effects that the characteristics of the individual and the autonomous vehicle have on use and acceptance are quantified through random utility models including logit kernel model taking into account panel effects.Currently, large overall hesitations towards autonomous vehicle adoption exist, with 44% of choice decisions remaining regular vehicles. Early AV adopters will likely be young, students, more educated, and spend more time in vehicles. Even if the SAV service were to be completely free, only 75% of individuals would currently be willing to use SAVs. The study also found various differences regarding the preferences of individuals in Israel and North America, namely that Israelis are overall more likely to shift to autonomous vehicles.Methods to encourage SAV use include increasing the costs for regular cars as well as educating the public about the benefits of shared autonomous vehicles.     

基于ANSYS二次开发的连续刚构桥建模技术

结合连续刚构桥的结构特点,介绍了ANSYS软件中采用UIDL和TCL/TK语言进行图形界面二次开发的方法,开发出建立连续刚构桥模型的菜单、对话框和APDL程序,有助于快速、便捷地建立连续刚构桥有限元模型。     

The effect of uncertainty on US transport-related GHG emissions and fuel consumption out to 2050

The future of US transport energy requirements and emissions is uncertain. Transport policy research has explored a number of scenarios to better understand the future characteristics of US light-duty vehicles. Deterministic scenario analysis is, however, unable to identify the impact of uncertainty on the future US vehicle fleet emissions and energy use. Variables determining the future fleet emissions and fuel use are inherently uncertain and thus the shortfall in understanding the impact of uncertainty on the future of US transport needs to be addressed. This paper uses a stochastic technology and fleet assessment model to quantify the uncertainties in US vehicle fleet emissions and fuel use for a realistic yet ambitious pathway which results in about a 50% reduction in fleet GHG emissions in 2050. The results show the probability distribution of fleet emissions, fuel use, and energy consumption over time out to 2050. The expected value for the fleet fuel consumption is about 450 and 350 billion litres of gasoline equivalent with standard deviations of 40 and 80 in 2030 and 2050, respectively. The expected value for the fleet GHG emissions is about 1360 and 850 Mt CO₂ equivalent with standard deviation of 130 and 230 in 2030 and 2050 respectively. The parameters that are major contributors to variations in emissions and fuel consumption are also identified and ranked through the uncertainty analysis. It is further shown that these major contributors change over time, and include parameters such as: vehicle scrappage rate, annual growth of vehicle kilometres travelled in the near term, total vehicle sales, fuel economy of the dominant naturally-aspirated spark ignition vehicles, and percentage of gasoline displaced by cellulosic ethanol. The findings in this paper demonstrate the importance of taking uncertainties into consideration when choosing amongst alternative fuel and emissions reduction pathways, in the light of their possible consequences.     

港口建设对区域经济技术效率的影响研究

沿海港口建设作为基础设施领域的重要投资,对区域经济发展起着直接和间接的作用.为了考察港口建设与区域经济技术效率之间的关系,本文采用随机前沿分析方法,将港口建设投资作为模型中技术无效项的核心解释变量,通过实证分析表明,我国沿海港口建设投资对区域经济技术效率的提升具有显著的正向作用,而且不同时段、不同地区的港口建设对区域经济技术效率的影响存在明显差别.在港口建设规划与政策制定过程中,应将区域经济技术效率因素和不同港口群之间的发展差异特征考虑在内.     

Compressive strength of tubular members with localized pitting damage considering variation of corrosion features

Localized pitting corrosion often occurs on marine and offshore structures in the form of patch corrosion with great uncertainties in the location, size and shape. The variation of corrosion features affects ultimate strength of tubular members significantly, but it is still not well understood. This paper presents a numerical study on tubular members of diverse slenderness ratios to clarify the localized pitting effect on ultimate strength. Numerical analyses were performed based on novel models of pitted members that were calibrated against benchmark column tests. Corrosion pits were randomly introduced on the local outside surfaces of members via stochastic simulation, forming corrosion patches varied in the location, size and shape. Numerical results obtained were regressed to propose a unified empirical formula to predict ultimate strength. It turned out that the shape of the corrosion patch has a significant influence on the ultimate strength. The shape change of the patch can alter failure modes of medium length columns. The reduction of ultimate strength is closely related to the shape ratio of the patch besides the volume loss of corroded material. The unified empirical formula incorporating the shape ratio and the volume loss shows a good ability to predict the experimental results.     

Entropy weighted average method for the determination of a single representative path flow solution for the static user equilibrium traffic assignment problem

The formulation of the static user equilibrium traffic assignment problem (UETAP) under some simplifying assumptions has a unique solution in terms of link flows but not in terms of path flows. Large variations are possible in the path flows obtained using different UETAP solution algorithms. Many transportation planning and management applications entail the need for path flows. This raises the issue of generating a meaningful path flow solution in practice. Past studies have sought to determine a single path flow solution using the maximum entropy concept. This study proposes an alternate approach to determine a single path flow solution that represents the entropy weighted average of the UETAP path flow solution space. It has the minimum expected Euclidean distance from all other path flow solution vectors of the UETAP. The mathematical model of the proposed entropy weighted average method is derived and its solution stability is proved. The model is easy to interpret and generalizes the proportionality condition of Bar-Gera and Boyce (1999). Results of numerical experiments using networks of different sizes suggest that the path flow solutions for the UETAP using the proposed method are about identical to those obtained using the maximum entropy approach. The entropy weighted average method requires low computational effort and is easier to implement, and can therefore serve as a potential alternative to the maximum entropy approach in practice.     

Stochastic averaging for estimating a ship roll in random longitudinal or oblique waves

In this work, the C11 container ship is taken as an example to analyze its rolling performances in random longitudinal or oblique waves. Firstly, a dynamic model of C11 roll in random waves is improved, and it is verified by the model test and numerical simulation. Mathematically, this dynamic model is a one-dimensional stochastic differential equation with random parametric (and external) excitation. Secondly, an enhanced stochastic averaging method is proposed to solve this stochastic differential equation. The validity of the solutions was verified by Monte Carlo simulation. At last, the probabilistic characteristics of the extreme rolling response were investigated based on the calculated results using enhanced stochastic averaging method. According to the analysis, some advices for ship's manoeuvring can be put forward when ships are navigating in random waves.     

Paying for harbor maintenance in the US: Options for moving past the Harbor Maintenance Tax

The Harbor Maintenance Tax is a fundamentally flawed maintenance funding mechanism for the critical US port system. Three alternatives were analyzed. User fee rates were estimated for either a national or regional tonnage based fee. Our results indicate that maintenance cost recovering regional fees could vary widely from about 10 cents per tonne to nearly 80 cents per tonne. A national rate would be about 30 cents per tonne. The large regional differences and affects on bulk shippers are likely to make implementing and maintaining cost recovering tonnage based fees infeasible. Two other mechanisms are considered. One possibility is to abolish the HMT without a replacement mechanism. The obvious strength of this approach is its simplicity, the weaknesses is that it is not budget neutral. Another possibility is to increase the federal diesel tax rate. One strength of the approach is the reasonable rate increase required to recover port maintenance costs (estimated between 0.278 and 0.315 cents per liter). An additional strength is that relatively inefficient fuel users will either make the largest share of the additional payments or the freight will shift modes to one that is more efficient. One weakness is that the rate has been unchanged since 1997, this points to the political difficulty involved in passing such a rate increase.