Bus Design Research Articles

Quantitative Analysis of Ringing in a Controller Area Network With Flexible Data Rate for Reliable Physical Layer Designs

Signal distortion, called ringing, in a controller area network with flexible data rate (CAN-FD) causes asymmetry in propagation delay throughout a network, which is dependent on its physical bus design and becomes a critical issue in limiting the data rate. Thus, in this paper, the bus structure of a CAN-FD is investigated and a transfer function of ringing is modeled by considering the physical bus configuration and features of a controller area network transceiver. The effects of the main parameters of the physical bus, such as the stub line length and number of stub lines connected to a joint connector, are then quantitatively analyzed using the presented model. When a practical bus structure is considered, additional signal distortion owing to a neighboring connector in a physical bus is modeled and analyzed. These analytical results are confirmed experimentally. Their comparison shows that the presented model-based analysis can closely approximate the size and time response of ringing and the extent of bit time distortion. The presented model-based analysis facilitates reliable communication performance by estimating the ringing and resulting asymmetry of the propagation delay for a given physical bus design and, if necessary, adjusting the design.

A personalized walking bus service requiring optimized route decisions: A real case

We address the design of the lines of a Walking Bus service according to a new paradigm, where children are picked up at home. The scarcity of accompanying persons together with the limit on the length of the deviations from the shortest itinerary of each child make the problem different from the traditional school bus and walking bus design. We propose an arc-based model, a path-based model tackled by column generation, and a heuristic procedure. Solution approaches are tested on a set of real and realistic instances. Real instances refer to the case study of a primary school in Italy.

Integrated Component Optimization and Energy Management for Plug-In Hybrid Electric Buses

The complicated coupling of component design together with energy management has brought a significant challenge to the design, optimization, and control of plug-in hybrid electric buses (PHEBs). This paper proposes an integrated optimization methodology to ensure the optimum performance of a PHEB with a view toward designing and applications. First, a novel co-optimization method is proposed for redesigning the driveline parameters offline, which combines a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) with dynamic programming to eliminate the impact of the coupling between the component design and energy management. Within the new method, the driveline parameters are optimally designed based on a global optimal energy management strategy, and fuel consumption and acceleration time can be respectively reduced by 4.71% and 4.59%. Second, a model-free adaptive control (MFAC) method is employed to realize the online optimal control of energy management on the basis of Pontryagin’s minimum principle (PMP). Particularly, an MFAC controller is used to track the predesigned linear state-of-charge (SOC), and its control variable is regarded as the co-state of the PMP. The main finding is that the co-state generated by the MFAC controller gradually converges on the optimal one derived according to the prior known driving cycles. This implies that the MFAC controller can realize a real-time application of the PMP strategy without acquiring the optimal co-state by offline calculation. Finally, the verification results demonstrated that the proposed MFAC-based method is applicable to both the typical and unknown stochastic driving cycles, meanwhile, and can further improve fuel economy compared to a conventional proportional-integral-differential (PID) controller.

Preliminary Design, Drive-Cycle Simulation and Energy Analysis of a Hybrid Transit Bus

Preliminary Design, Drive-Cycle Simulation and Energy Analysis of a Hybrid Transit Bus

A proactive approach to assess safety level of urban bus stops

Road safety has emerged as a global concern, and bus stops are the major points of concern as they act as interfaces where pedestrians interact with transit vehicles. In order to achieve a safe and sustainable infrastructure at bus stops, it is necessary to assess safety level of bus stops and suggest safety improvement measures. The present work aims to investigate whether design and management deficiencies of bus stops have any effect on safety of passengers and pedestrians. It is also aimed to develop a pro-active approach for evaluating safety level of bus stops by identifying design and management deficiencies. The methodology includes (i) identification of unsafe acts and causal factors at bus stops, (ii) classification of causal factors under design and management deficiencies, (iii) estimation of weightage of causal factors, (iv) fuzzy evaluation of bus stops, (v) calculation of safety levels of bus stops, and (vi) validation of the methodology using crash data. While a combination of Fuzzy AHP and RIDIT analysis was used to estimate the weightage of causal factors, a fuzzy-scoring-based expert field investigation was carried out to assess design and management deficiencies of bus stops. The methodology was applied to evaluate the safety level of bus stops located along a major urban corridor in Kolkata, India.

A High-Performance Modified AXI Master Slave on-Chip Bus Design and Verification

A High-Performance Modified AXI Master Slave on-Chip Bus Design and Verification

Impact of curbside bus stop locations on mixed traffic dynamics: a bus route perspective

Intermittent lane blockage at curb-side bus stops, characterized by aggressive lane changes, undue traffic delay and drop of road capacity, creates the major bottleneck in mixed urban traffic. This paper develops an extended link-node structured two-lane cell transmission model (CTM) that is capable of dynamically capturing the effect of lane blockage at bus stops and comprehensively modelling mandatory and discretionary lane changing (MLC & DLC) manoeuvers along a bus route under various traffic demand levels. Such modelling features, with proper calibration, have been validated to outperform the traditional CTM in terms of replicating the impact of curbside bus stops on mixed traffic dynamics. Application of the proposed model at a route level indicates existence of the optimal distribution of bus stop locations that minimizes the total traffic delay regardless of link lengths and stop densities on the route. Microscopic traffic flow characteristics such as time-varying DLC, MLC and cell densities along the bus route further demonstrate the capability of the proposed route-level model to capture the traffic phenomena (e.g. turning traffic and spill-over exacerbated by stops very close to upstream intersections) that are underrated in traditional single link or intersection based studies. The proposed model, embedded with a mathematical optimization framework, may provide insights in better planning, design, and relocation of curbside bus stops along urban streets to mitigate traffic congestion and to improve bus service.

Research on Information Collection Method Based on Equipment Serial Bus

Equipment status and operation information acquisition are the basis of information technology support. The distributed design of serial bus is widely used in modern weapon equipment. Based on the equipment control bus, it is more economical and convenient to realize the equipment status and operation information collection. The equipment status and operation information acquisition method based on equipment control bus is studied and two kinds of information acquisition mode are explored particularly in this paper. That application and existing problems are also analyzed. The future development of equipment status and operation information acquisition based on equipment control bus is summarized in the last.

Transit advertising in corporate branding: a multilevel study

PurposeThe purpose of the present study is to examine the effectiveness of tourist shuttle bus advertising for the corporate brand image of gaming and hospitality operators.Design/methodology/approachGrounded in the theoretical framework of Message Response Involvement (MRI) theory, a multilevel design with hierarchical modeling was adopted to examine the hypothesized paths between consumers’ message processing components and corporate brand equity. The moderating effects of shuttle bus design were also investigated. The data were collected via a self-administered questionnaire from 595 tourists visiting Macao.FindingsThe results indicated that advertising effectiveness (i.e., corporate brand equity) was largely dependent on consumers’ motivation and ability to process information. When design was included as a moderator, it enhanced the influence of consumers’ motivation to process information on advertising effectiveness.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings highlight the importance of tourist shuttle buses as an advertising platform in the hospitality and gaming industry and depict important aspects of consumers and executional cues that corporations should focus on improving shuttle bus advertising effectiveness.Originality/valueThis study examines an underexplored, yet frequently used, advertising channel – the shuttle bus. Specifically, it offers a better understanding of transit advertising effectiveness from the corporate level (design) and individual level (consumers’ motivation, ability and opportunity) in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Improvement on design and manufacture of bus based on traffic accident prevention

In some typical bus accidents, the causes of passenger injury have presented some common characteristics, which makes it necessary to improve the design of bus. In general, bus traffic accidents can be divided into two typical forms: emergency braking and rollover, both of which could seriously threaten the life security of passengers. In this article, these two kinds of bus accident are studied through numerical simulation and some improving suggestions on bus design and manufacture are given. According to simulation results, passengers may suffer from serious hurt due to emergency braking acceleration and deformation of bus body caused by the impact with highway guardrail. Improving measures include equipping seats with three-point belts, adding board on the handrail and enhancing the material and structure of side uprights of the bus. Simulation results show that these improving measures can provide better protection for the passengers involving bus traffic accidents, which has verified the rationality of these measures.

Operational Design for a Real-Time Flexible Transit System Considering Passenger Demand and Willingness to Pay

Internet-based transit services have the potential to enable fully connected, safe, reliable, efficient, and flexible service in the public transit system. The flexible transit system (FTS) allows passengers to make individual travel requests and receive customized door-to-door service by specifying their origins and destinations (OD), departure time range, and willingness to pay (WTP). Unlike the uniform and stable WTP in our previous paper, we consider an exponential decay function for the real pickup locations of passengers, and we proposed a joint design of two-level bus stops in temporal and spatial variations of travel demands. To ensure practical applications of this real-time FTS model, we combine the traversing method and the improved tabu search algorithm. A numerical example from Guangzhou is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model and its effectiveness in reducing system cost.

Safety and reliability of the personal bus carriages in integrated municipal system of traffic and public transport management - analysis of literature

The article analyzes the city's logistics development strategies and its public transport, especially bus traffic. Statistical analysis of all road transport in the European Union (EU) has been carried out. The most important reasons for the tragic road accidents in Poland have been mixed up. Key elements of active safety and passive safety of buses and road safety were analyzed. Characterized key indicators of road safety in the EU and the probability of bus incidents. The impact on the ecology of the city of road transport was analyzed in terms of the significance of exhaust emissions of various bus designs and emissions of other pollutants.

Evaluating the Impacts of Bus Stop Design and Bus Dwelling on Operations of Multitype Road Users

On urban streets with bus stops, bus arrivals can disrupt traffic flows in the neighboring areas. Different stop designs have distinct influences on the road users. This study aims to evaluate how different types of bus stops affect the operations of vehicles, bicycles, and buses that pass by. Four types of stops that differ in geometric layout are examined. They are termed the shared bike/bus (Type 1), separated shared bike/bus (Type 2), vehicle/bus with inboard bike lane (Type 3), and bus bay with inboard bike lane (Type 4). Data are collected from eight sites in two cities of China. Results of data analysis show that different bus stop designs have quite different impacts on the neighboring traffic flows. More specifically, Type 3 stops create the least bicycle delay but the largest vehicle delay. Type 4 stops have the least impact on bicycle and vehicle operations, but occupy the most road space. Traffic operations are less affected by Type 1 stops than by Type 2 stops. Policy suggestions are discussed regarding the optimal design of bus stops that minimizes the total vehicle delay of all modes.

Design and Implementation of Shared Bus based Heterogeneous MPSoC

Design and Implementation of Shared Bus based Heterogeneous MPSoC

Design and Implementation of Amorphous Magnetic Material Common Magnetic Bus for the Replacement of Common DC Bus

In recent years, microgrid technologies have gained considerable interest, where a common dc-bus is generally used to interconnect multiple power sources. The existing technology of common dc bus-based direct integration of multiple sources has some critical problems, such as isolation and the requirement of additional control circuit for voltage imbalance and common mode. A common high-frequency magnetic bus (instead of the common dc bus) is proposed in this paper to overcome the limitations and complications of the existing technology of dc bus-based direct integration of multiple sources. In this paper, an extensive investigation on electromagnetic performance of advanced magnetic materials (amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys) is presented. The design process of an efficient and compact high-frequency common magnetic bus for integration of multiple power sources is also discussed. The new technology will be a fundamental component for the future grids to interconnect various sources magnetically, providing an inherent solution to voltage imbalance and isolation problems.

A Fault Diagnosis Expert System for Commercial Bus Manufacturing process

Bus manufacturing is one of the important assets in automotive industries as well as mode of public transportation. The design process is difficult and long throughout time. Moreover, there are many manuals, rules and regulation according to different standard which make the standardization and design process to be difficult and time consuming. Hence, this project describes the use of an expert system shell for commercial bus design. In bus manufacturing field, design of commercial bus is heavily depending on human experts. With the help of expert system, process of design commercial bus will be shortened up to 56.5% compared to conventional way. The developed system can be used as a training module for inexperienced personnel. In this research work, the fault diagnosis system was developed by using Kappa-PC expert system shell. It is supported by object orientated technology for the MS window environment. Lastly, the developed system will be validated with a case study to verify the capability of the developed system.

Integrating Bus Holding Control Strategies and Schedule Recovery: Simulation-Based Comparison and Recommendation

In the absence of control strategies, headway fluctuation and bus bunching are commonly observed in transit operation due to the stochastic attributes such as travel time and passenger demand. Existing research on real-time control largely focused on developing operational tactics to maintain bus arrival regularity at stops without fully considering the effect of schedule recovery. This paper investigates the effect of bus driver behavior on bus holding control strategies and more specifically their effort in catching up with schedule in case of delay, i.e., schedule recovery. To this end, this paper first proposes a bus propagation model with capacity constraint to simulate the evolution of bus trajectories along a fixed route. It proceeds to explicitly incorporate both holding control actions and schedule recovery effect into the bus propagation model. Using simulation for a high-frequency bus line in Guangzhou, China, schedule- (SH) and headway-based holding (HH) control strategies are compared under various operational settings in the context of schedule recovery. These comparisons show that SH performs better under certain conditions, and SH generally benefits more from schedule recovery than HH. These results provide insights into the bus stop layout design and implementation of holding methods in the context of cruising guidance.

A Systems Pedagogy and a Novel Brainstorming Approach to Initiate Pico/Nano/Micro-Satellite (PNMSat) Engineering Research and Development at Academic Institutions in India

The article describes the outcome of an initiative to educate the youth in India, motivate them to seek diverse careers, fulfilling livelihoods and contribute towards the nation by engaging them in pico/nano/micro-satellite (PNMSat) design engineering. A systems pedagogy, derived out of a systems engineering approach developed for the design and development of PNMSat/CubeSat missions, is used to teach a comprehensive course in PNMSat design engineering. A novel approach used in the course involves brainstorming the participants to conceive a PNMSat payload and teach the PNMSat bus design to accommodate the conceived payload. This approach and the comprehensive treatment of a course in satellite design are the first of their kind in India; particularly in the field of small satellite design engineering. The article describes in detail the course contents, the novel approach and the results of the course assessments from three offerings – Summer 2015, Summer 2016 and Summer 2017. The article presents the results of surveys conducted to assess the impact on the participants' awareness in PNMSat engineering, motivation to pursue diverse careers and fulfilling livelihoods. It's been observed that engineering institutions in India are keen to initiate a PNMSat program but have struggled to do so due to the lack of a systematic approach. The article provides an insight into addressing this problem and initiating a PNMSat program at engineering institutions in India.

Modeling the effect of bus stops on capacity of curb lane

With the increase of buses and bus lines, a negative effect on road section capacity is made by the prolonged delay and queuing time at bus stops. However, existing methods of measuring the negative effect pay little attention to different bus stop types in the curb lanes. This paper uses Gap theory and Queuing theory to build models for effect-time and potential capacity in different conditions, including curbside bus stops, bus bays with overflow and bus bays without overflow. In order to make the effect-time models accurate and reliable, two types of probabilities are introduced. One is the probability that the dwell time is less than the headway of curb lane at curbside bus stops; the other is the overflow probability at bus bays. Based on the fundamental road capacity model and effect-time models, potential capacity models of curb lane are designed. The new models are calibrated by the survey data from Changchun City, and verified by the simulation software of VISSIM. Furthermore, with different arrival rates of vehicles, the setting conditions of bus stops are researched. Results show that the potential capacity models have high precision. They can offer a reference for recognizing the effect of bus stops on the capacity of curb lane, which can provide a basis for planning, design and management of urban roads and bus stops.

短距離走行・高頻度充電コンセプトを採用した電動中型バスの設計・製作・性能評価

短距離走行・高頻度充電コンセプトを採用した電動中型バスの設計・製作・性能評価