Tunnel bottleneck management with high-occupancy vehicle priority on intelligent freeways

Tunnels on freeways,as one of the critical bottlenecks,frequently cause severe congestion and passenger delay.To solve the tunnel bottleneck problem,most of the existing research can be divided into two types.One is to adopt variable speed limits(VSLs)to regulate a predetermined speed for vehicles to get through a bottleneck smoothly.The other is to adopt high-occupancy vehicle(HOV)lane management.In HOV lane management strategies,all traffic is divided into HOVs and low-occupancy vehicles(LOVs).HOVs are vehicles with a driver and one or more passengers.LOVs are vehicles with only a driver.This kind of research can grant priority to HOVs by providing a dedicated HOV lane.However,the existing research cannot both mitigate congestion and maximize passenger-oriented benefits.To address the research gap,this paper leverages connected and automated vehicle(CAV)technologies on intelligent freeways and develops a tunnel bottleneck management strategy with a dynamic HOV lane(DHL).The strategy bears the following features:1)enables tunnel bottleneck management at a microscopic level;2)maximizes passenger-oriented benefits;3)grants priority to HOVs even when the HOV lane is open to LOVs;4)allocates right-of-way segments for HOVs and LOVs in real time;and 5)performs well in a mixed-traffic environment.The proposed strategy is evaluated through comparison against the non-control baseline and a VSL strategy.Sensitivity analysis is conducted under different congestion levels and penetration rates.The results demonstrate that the proposed strategy outperforms in terms of passenger-oriented delay reduction and HOVs’priority level improvement.

Improving the Weld Formation and Mechanical Properties of the AA-5A06 Friction Pull Plug Welds by Axial Force Control

In the present study, the weld formation and mechanical properties of the AA-5A06 friction pull plug welded(FPPW) joints were improved by controlling the axial force history. Several defect-free FPPW joints were made successfully by using the welding parameters of 15–20 k N/s axial loading rate, 20–30 k N axial welding force and 6–7 mm axial feeding displacement. The results indicated that using higher axial loading rate and axial welding force produced more stable heat generation and shorter frictional heating time between the frictional interface. In this case, the plastic flow of the materials around the hole could be further improved since the axial feeding displacement of the plug was increased. The maximum ultimate tensile strength(UTS) and elongation of the FPPW 5A06 joints were 314 MPa and 4.8%, respectively. The thermal mechanically affect zone(TMAZ) had the lowest hardness value throughout the joint and was found as the fracture location to all the tensile samples. The softening of TMAZ was mainly caused by the weakening of the cold work hardening and the coarsening of grains.