How the environmental impact affects the design of logistics networks based on cost minimization

The degree of centralization of the logistics network is one of the important strategic decisions to take. This issue has often been studied but mainly from a cost minimization focus. This research studies the influence of incorporating the environmental impact in logistics network design models, comparing the results with those obtained considering cost minimization only. A fuzzy biobjective optimization model is used to carry out a number of experiments. By weighting the relative importance of the two objectives, the differences with respect to the base cost minimization solution can be ascertained. Our results show that in general more material is moved through warehouses when the environmental impact is considered and more decentralized facilities are opened.     

武汉港阳逻港区多式联运发展思路

多式联运能够充分发挥各种运输方式的综合优势,对于推动物流业降本增效、完善现代综合交通运输体系具有积极意义。武汉港阳逻港区具备发展多式联运的各项要素,但缺乏对多式联运发展的系统性规划,港区多式联运发展相对滞后,综合交通优势尚未有效发挥。通过总结典型案例的发展经验,结合港区内外部综合因素,思考港区多式联运发展思路,探讨港区多式联运的布局规划以及综合服务的提升,并提出相关建议。     

Fractional-order-based ACC/CACC algorithm for improving string stability

Traffic flow optimization and driver comfort enhancement are the main contributions of an Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system. If communication links are added, more safety and shorter gaps can be reached performing a Cooperative-ACC (CACC). Although shortening the inter-vehicular distances directly improves traffic flow, it can cause string unstable behavior. This paper presents fractional-order-based control algorithms to enhance the car-following and string stability performance for both ACC and CACC vehicle strings, including communication temporal delay effects. The proposed controller is compared with state-of-the-art implementations, exhibiting better performance. Simulation and real experiments have been conducted for validating the approach.     

Design,analysis and performance evaluation of a third order distributed protocol for platooning in the presence of time-varying delays and switching topologies

This paper is concerned with the problem of designing a decentralized consensus protocol for platooning of non-identical vehicles in the presence of heterogeneous time-varying communication delays. The proposed control protocol makes use of a state feedback and to this aim drivetrain dynamics are modeled as third-order linear systems. Necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence and exponential stability, derived by using an appropriate Krasovskii functional, demonstrate the ability of the platoon in reaching the required regime with an exponentially bounded behavior. The proposed LMI-based approach allows to estimate both delay margin and decay rate. Moreover, convergence is proven under switching communication network topologies by means of a Lyapunov-Razumikhin function, and the assessment of a string stable behavior has been also theoretically investigated. High-fidelity simulations with Plexe show the effectiveness of the theoretical results in different driving conditions and in the presence of external disturbances and communication impairment. Different communication channel models are used in the validation stage to further prove robustness of the proposed methodology with respect hard delay and packets losses.     

Plate scanning tools to obtain travel times in traffic networks

The management of vehicle travel times has been shown to be fundamental to traffic network analysis. To collect travel time measurement, some methods focus solely on isolated links or highway segments, and where two measurement points, at the beginning and at the end of a section, are deemed sufficient to evaluate users' travel time. However, in many cases, transport studies involve networks in which the problem is more complex. This article takes advantage of the plate scanning technique to propose an algorithm that minimizes the required number of registering devices and their location in order to identify vehicles candidates to compute the travel times of a given set of routes (or subroutes). The merits of the proposed method are explained using simple examples and are illustrated by its application to the real network of Ciudad Real.     

Travel time estimation oriented freeway sensor placement problem considering sensor failure

Optimal sensor placement on freeway corridor is of great interest to transportation authorities. However, current traffic sensors are easily subject to various failures. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate sensor failure into the optimal sensor placement model. In this article, a two-stage stochastic model is proposed for the purpose of travel time estimation on freeway corridor. To balance the effectiveness and reliability, a stochastic conditional value at risk (CVaR) model is also proposed. Since both models are too complicated, a customized genetic algorithm is developed. Numerical experiments show that considering sensor failure makes a significant performance improvement in the sensor placement pattern. Sensitivity analysis is also applied to investigate the impact of a number of allowable sensors and different traffic sensor failure probability.     

A new model for temporal–spatial stochastic analysis of vehicle–track coupled systems

The vehicle–track coupled system has a random nature in the time–space domain. This paper proposes a computational model to analyse the temporal–spatial stochastic vibrations of vehicle–track systems, where the vehicle–track system is divided into a vehicle subsystem, track subsystem, and interfacial subsystem between the wheel and rail. In this model, the time-varying randomicity of dynamical parameters of the vehicle system, correlation, and randomness of the track structural parameters in the time–space joint dimensions, and randomness of the track random irregularities are considered. A probability dimension-reduction method was used to randomly combine different random variables. Furthermore, the probability density evolution method was applied to solve the delivery problem of probabilities between excitation inputs and response outputs. The temporal–spatial stochastic vibrations of the vehicle–track system with different coefficients of variation were studied, in which we assumed that the dynamic parameters obeyed the normal distribution, and the stochastic simulation method of the track random irregularities is probed into. The calculated results from this model are consistent with the actual measured results and physical conceptions. Thus, the temporal–spatial stochastic evolutionary mechanism can be explored, and the limits of dynamic indices can be formulated by using this developed model.     

四川旅游资源交通系统综合布局分析

作为影响旅游活动的重要因素之一,交通布局直接关系到旅游业的发展。本文根据四川旅游资源的现状、地理位置等情况,将四川划分出三大旅游经济圈,从各旅游经济圈交通现状及客流特征入手,利用关联分析的方法,结合数据对比,剖析了各旅游经济圈与交通的关联。最后,在整合四川旅游资源的前提下,得出了四川旅游资源交通系统综合布局的相关结论。