Modelling the impact of weather conditions on active transportation travel behaviour

Three weather sensitive models are used to explore the relationship between weather and home-based work trips within the City of Toronto, focusing on active modes of transportation. The data are restricted to non-captive commuters who have the option of selecting among five basic modes of auto driver, auto passenger, transit, bike and walk. Daily trip rates in various weather conditions are assessed. Overall, the results confirm that impact of weather on active modes of transportation is significant enough to deserve attention at the research, data collection and planning levels.     

Predicting queue variability to enable analysis of overload risk

ABSTRACT

Predicting the risk of traffic demands and delays exceeding critical limits at road junctions, airports, hospitals, etc., requires knowing how both mean and variance of queue size vary over time. Microscopic simulation can explore variability but is computationally demanding and gives only sample results. A computationally efficient approximation to the mean is used in many modelling tools, but only empirical extensions for variance in particular situations have been available. The paper derives theoretical formulae for time-dependent and equilibrium variance, believed to be novel and to apply generally to queues covered by the Pollaczek–Khinchin mean formula, and offering possible structural insights. These are applied in an extended approximation giving mutually consistent mean and variance estimates with improved accuracy. Tests on oversaturated peak demand cases are compared with Markov probabilistic simulation, demonstrating accuracy (R^2?>?0.99) for typical random, priority-like (M/M/1) and traffic-signal-like (M/D/1) queues. Implications for risk analysis, planning and policy are considered.     

Variability of the Bohai Sea circulation based on model calculations

The circulation and the hydrography of the Bohai Sea are simulated with the Hamburg Shelf Ocean Model (HAMSOM). The model is three-dimensional, prognostic baroclinic and has a resolution of 5 min in latitude and longitude and 10 layers in the vertical. It is initialised and forced with the five main tidal constituents, temperature and salinity distributions taken from the Levitus database, monthly mean river run-off values and European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) re-analysed data of air pressure, wind stress and of those parameters relevant for the calculation of heat fluxes. The simulation period covers 14 years from 1980 to 1993 due to the availability of the time-dependent ECMWF forcing.The results are analysed by means of time series and EOFs focussing on the interpretation of fluctuations with periods above the tidal cycle. Furthermore, tracer simulations are carried out and turnover times are calculated in order to evaluate the importance of these fluctuations on the renewal and transport of water masses in the Bohai Sea.One of the major outcomes of the investigation is the overall dominance of the annual cycle in all hydrographic parameters and the importance of stochastic weather fluctuations on the transport of water masses in the Bohai Sea.     

托运人在不同时空下的选择行为差异揭示

某一因素对托运人选择行为的影响会随着空间和时间变化. 既有研究多关注特定空间或时间的托运人选择行为,较少进行横向(空间)和纵向(时间)比较. 为探索托运人选择行为差异及变化规律,采集不同时空的5 个数据集,构建多类线性或非线性效用函数的多项 Logit 模型及混合Logit 模型. 结果表明：在空间维度,某一地区托运人选择行为与其他地区显著不同;在时间维度,伴随货运业快速发展,货运方式选择模型适用年限呈缩短趋势.     

转向器齿轮齿条传动副的几何和啮合计算

齿轮齿条式转向器中的齿轮齿数仅有5～8个齿，按标准齿轮或简单变位齿轮的几何计算方法设计齿轮和齿争，无法使其重合度达到1.0.文章介绍了运用虚拟齿轮及当量齿轮的方法计算重合度，并通过大量计算得到参数选择表，方便设计师的查阅使用。阐述了齿轮齿顶圆齿厚计算方法、齿条齿根圆角及齿务齿根过渡曲线干涉验算方法。表明通过合理选择变位系数、齿顶高及齿根高，可以确保齿轮和齿顶圆齿厚达到0．3—0．5个模数，重合度达到1．0。并给出计算实例：     

Estimates of vertical mixing during a Lagrangian experiment off the Galician coast

An adjoint 1-D model was used to determine vertical diffusivity coefficients from temperature profiles collected within a filament escaping from the Galician coast following an upwelling event. The optimisation scheme ended with relatively high diffusivity values within the thermocline (9×10⁻⁵ m² s⁻¹). Such high values are relevant for biogeochemical exchanges between surface and deep waters in stratified areas.The optimised values were several orders of magnitude higher than the bulk of diffusivity measurements recorded with a free-falling device; however, the optimisation solution was consistent with the arithmetic mean of the measurements in the thermocline (7.7×10⁻⁵ m² s⁻¹), giving more weight to the few largest values. Below the thermocline, the data assimilation method failed because of the three-dimensional nature of the advective field of the upwelling system. Ignoring this advective forcing in the model led to estimates that were two orders of magnitude too high.The results suggest that turbulent mixing is a random process where a few intense events determine the average mixing that drives the long-term evolution of the water column structure. This statistical property is very important when one wants to use instantaneous diffusivity measurements for modelling purposes.     

Nonlinear three-dimensional wagon-track model for the investigation of rail corrugation initiation on curved track

A nonlinear wagon-track model on curved track has been developed to characterize rail corrugation formation due to self-excitation of the wheel-rail stick-slip process. In this model, wagon movements were described using up to 78 degrees of freedom (DOFs) to model a three-piece freight bogie. Innovatively, the wheelset movements are described using nine DOFs, including torsional and bending modes about the longitudinal and vertical directions. The track modelling is considered as a one-layer structure (two rail beams on discrete spring and damper elements). The wheel sliding after creepage saturation is considered in the wheel-rail interface modelling. Simulation of a case study shows that the frequencies of the wheel stick-slip process are composed of the basic frequency, which might come from the combined effect of sleeper-passing frequency and one-third of the combined torsional and bending frequency of the wheelset, and the double and triple basic frequencies, which form the wavelengths of rail corrugation at different situations.     

Towards a generic benchmarking platform for origin–destination flows estimation/updating algorithms: Design,demonstration and validation

Estimation/updating of Origin–Destination (OD) flows and other traffic state parameters is a classical, widely adopted procedure in transport engineering, both in off-line and in on-line contexts. Notwithstanding numerous approaches proposed in the literature, there is still room for considerable improvements, also leveraging the unprecedented opportunity offered by information and communication technologies and big data. A key issue relates to the unobservability of OD flows in real networks – except from closed highway systems – thus leading to inherent difficulties in measuring performance of OD flows estimation/updating methods and algorithms. Starting from these premises, the paper proposes a common evaluation and benchmarking framework, providing a synthetic test bed, which enables implementation and comparison of OD estimation/updating algorithms and methodologies under “standardized” conditions. The framework, implemented in a platform available to interested parties upon request, has been flexibly designed and allows comparing a variety of approaches under various settings and conditions. Specifically, the structure and the key features of the framework are presented, along with a detailed experimental design for the application of different dynamic OD flow estimation algorithms. By way of example, applications to both off-line/planning and on-line algorithms are presented, together with a demonstration of the extensibility of the presented framework to accommodate additional data sources.