Sharif Digital Repository

With the growing rate of urbanization, freight transportation systems have become critical in supporting economic and social needs in the United States. In order to achieve efficient and effective operations, freight transportation systems are recognizing the value of using Cyber-Physical (CP) technologies. This research provides a scenario-based assessment of CP technology penetration to improve sustainability in freight transportation systems with a focus on the use of smart GPS technologies by the trucking industry in Tennessee. Based on the case study, CP technologies can result in significant benefits to the economy, environment, and society. A cost-benefit analysis shows that benefits... 

Trucking plays a vital role in economic development in every country, especially countries where it serves as the backbone of the economy. The fast growth of economy in Iran as a developing country has also been accompanied by an alarming situation in terms of fatalities in truck-involved crashes, among the drivers and passengers of the trucks as well as the other vehicles involved. Despite the sizable efforts to investigate the truck-involved crashes, very little is known about the safety of truck movements in developing countries, and about the single-truck crashes worldwide. Thus, this study aims to uncover significant factors associated with injury severities sustained by truck drivers... 

Cross-docking is a new logistic technique that brings considerable benefits such as low inventory level, customer satisfaction, etc. To achieve these benefits, coordination between transportation facilities is quite important. This paper studies both inbound and outbound scheduling problem and assignment of products from inbound truck to outbound trucks in a cross-docking warehouse including multiple receiving and shipping dock doors. To do so, an MILP model is developed, which is NP-hard. Thus, a GA algorithm is developed and has been strengthened with two proposed neighborhood search to tackle the developed problem in medium and large size instances. Finally, numerical results of three... 

In this paper, an optimized control strategy is proposed for a split parallel hydraulic hybrid truck. The model of the vehicle was simulated in Simulink. According to a global optimization technique, a fuzzy control strategy is developed for the vehicle. This strategy shows flexibility for different drive cycles and a desirable fuel consumption reduction, especially for a low speed drive cycle, which is extracted according to an urban utility vehicle mission  

Truck accidents are an issue of concern due to their severity. Logit modeling and Neural Network modeling are performed to investigate factors such as vehicle, roadway, environment and driver characteristics that can potentially contribute to the severity of truck accidents. The objective of this study is to present models that can predict the severity of truck accidents and to identify the important factors causing these accidents. Comparison between neural networks and logit modeling are made using vehicle crash data on two-lane rural highways in Iran. A variety of variables related to roadways, vehicles, environment and drivers, such as, driver fatigue, head-on collision and lack of... 

Extensive studies have examined the effect of variables such as demographic characteristics, insomnia, and working conditions of drivers individually on inattention-related error as well as expression of anger in driving. Nevertheless, so far no study has tested the concurrent effect of these factors on crashes. This study has dealt with indirect investigation of the effect of variables including demographic characteristics, insomnia, and working conditions of drivers on inattention-related error and expression of anger in driving (as mediation model). Next, the effect of these two variables on the probability of incidence of road crashes has been assessed among truck drivers. For this... 

This paper develops a behavioral analysis of freight mode choice decisions that could provide a basis for an acceptable analytical tool for policy assessment. The paper specifically examines the way that truck and rail compete for commodity movement in the US. Two binary mode choice models are introduced in which some shipment-specific variables (e.g. distance, weight and value) and mode-specific variables (e.g. haul time and cost) are found to be determinants. The specifications of the non-selected choice are imputed in a machine learning module. Shipping cost is found to be a central factor for rail shipments, while road shipments are found to be more sensitive to haul time. Sensitivity of... 

Road traffic crashes have become an important public health problem. By studying the statistics of heavy vehicle crashes in the world, it becomes obvious that although heavy vehicle drivers experience fewer crashes than private car drivers, a large percentage of heavy vehicle crashes leads to death. So, it is important to identify the driving characteristics of heavy vehicle drivers. In this study, 474 Iranian truck drivers were interviewed face to face. Response rate of the survey was 80%, the participants who answered the questions on two behavioral questionnaires: Driver Behavior Questionnaire (DBQ) and Attention-Related Driving Error Scale (ARDES). Also, two sleep assessing... 

Extensive studies have examined the effect of variables such as demographic characteristics, insomnia, and working conditions of drivers individually on inattention-related error as well as expression of anger in driving. Nevertheless, so far no study has tested the concurrent effect of these factors on crashes. This study has dealt with indirect investigation of the effect of variables including demographic characteristics, insomnia, and working conditions of drivers on inattention-related error and expression of anger in driving (as mediation model). Next, the effect of these two variables on the probability of incidence of road crashes has been assessed among truck drivers. For this... 

This paper investigated the headway distribution of platooning vehicles in work zones with and without automated Speed Photo Enforcement (SPE). Data from two work zones were collected and analyzed. The portion of vehicles traveling with a very short headway (less than 0.7 sec) was also examined. In addition, the behavior of vehicles near the law enforcement vehicles was analyzed in terms of applying brakes and changing lane in one of the work zones. The results indicated that the mean headway of cars in the median lane significantly increased in both work zones when the SPE van was present compared to the base condition. For trucks, the mean headway increase was significant only in the... 

Driving behavior recognition is a notable topic in travel safety, as transportation and insurance companies could adopt effective tools to detect unsafe driving and internalize the associated costs. Different driving events and the related severity must be detected to distinguish abnormal behaviors. The global positioning system (GPS) provides useful information regarding the location of the vehicle at any time and is vastly used in various devices such as smartphones and GPS trackers. Other sensors, on the other hand, provide complementary valuable information but their implementation requires extra costs and more complex and intensive algorithms. We developed a threshold-based algorithm to... 

Bridge behavior under passing traffic loads has been studied for the past 50 years. This paper presents how to model congestion on bridges and how the maximum dynamic stress of bridges change during the passing of moving vehicles. Most current research is based on mid-span dynamic effects due to traffic load and most bridge codes define a factor called the dynamic load allowance (DLA), which is applied to the maximum static moment under static loading. This paper presents an algorithm to solve the governing equation of the bridge as well as the equations of motions of two real European trucks with different speeds, simultaneously. It will be shown, considering congestion in eight case...