Yang He

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

5-20-2012

School/College

College of Science, Engineering, and Technology (COSET)

Degree Name

MS in Transportation Planning & Management

First Advisor

Lei Yu

Abstract

In response to the increasing need for accurate estimation of fuel consumption and emissions in dynamic traffic networks, research has been conducted to characterize driving and traffic conditions by Vehicle-Specific Power (VSP) distributions; however, there has been a general lack of systematic effort to study the characteristics of difference of real world VSP distributions. In this context, this paper intends to develop appropriate algorithms to investigate the characteristics of the difference of VSP distributions and provide a quantitative analysis between emission difference and the difference of VSP distributions in terms of the common VSP binning approach. After comprehensively examining the collected data in the proposed algorithms, some regular patterns were found. Specifically, in a descending manner, the difference of VSP distributions demonstrates a rhythmic and smooth variation trend in each mathematical model. Furthermore, the emission difference can be expressed very well as a power function of the difference of VSP distributions. Finally, a further analysis of a case study covering VSP distributions in both urban restricted access roadways and urban unrestricted access roadways was conducted in Houston, demonstrating that the algorithms developed in this 1 2 study are reliable and applicable to exploring the characteristics of the difference of VSP distributions and also revealing a possible relationship between the emission difference and the difference of VSP distributions.

Download

Share

COinS