Engineering Commons^™

An Analysis Of Hydroacoustic Transmission Loss Associated With Marine Pile Driving, Jonathan Paul Berube

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been a growing concern in recent years about the effects of anthropogenic noise due to marine pile driving on underwater wildlife. Current guidelines for mitigating hydroacoustic effects associated with these events are based upon relatively simple transmission loss formulations. The advantage to these guidelines is that computing transmission loss using their prescribed methods is not labor intensive, but their disadvantage is that they may not take all variables into account. Because of this, it may be possible to improve transmission loss computations. To better-characterize marine pile driving sound transmission loss, a unique in-water instrumentation system was developed. This …

Investigating The Effects Of Rainfall On Traffic Operations On Florida Freeways, Lucia Andrew

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rainfall affects the performance of traffic operations and endangers safety. A common and conventional method (rain gauges) for rainfall measurements mostly provide precipitation records in hourly and 15-minute intervals. However, reliability, continuity, and wide area coverage pose challenges with this data collection method. There is also a greater likelihood for data misrepresentation in areas where short duration rainfall is predominant, i.e., reported values may not reflect the actual equivalent rainfall intensity during subintervals over the entire reporting period. With recent weather and climate patterns increasing in severity, there is a need for a more effective and reliable way of measuring …

Evaluating The Performance Of Cooperative Merging Assistance System For Aging Drivers, Flavius Matata

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Freeway merging maneuvers demand considerable attention by drivers and are among the more complex operations drivers must perform on freeways. Aging drivers, a growing population in the United States, face added challenges when merging. This study utilized Vissim models created in a previous study that modeled the behavior of aging drivers during freeway merging. An algorithm for Cooperative Merging Assistance System (CMAS) that utilizes Connected Vehicle (CV) technology was developed in this study. The Vissim models were created for two interchanges on I-75 in Fort Myers, Florida, each with different geometric characteristics. Acceleration lane lengths of 1000ft and 1500ft were …

The Use Of Real-Time Connected Vehicles And Here Data In Developing An Automated Freeway Incident Detection Algorithm, Hendry Nyanza Imani

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traffic incidents cause severe problems on roadways. About 6.3 million highway crashes are reported annually only in the United States, among which more than 32,000 are fatal crashes. Reducing the risk of traffic incidents is key to effective traffic incident management (TIM). Quick detection of unexpected traffic incidents on roadways contribute to quick clearance and hence improve safety. Existing techniques for the detection of freeway incidents are not reliable.

This study focuses on exploring the potential of emerging connected vehicles (CV) technology in automated freeway incident detection in the mixed traffic environment. The study aims at developing an automated freeway …

Evaluating Mobility And Safety Benefits Of Freeway Service Patrols: A Case Study Of Florida's Road Rangers, Jimoku H. Salum

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida’s Road Rangers monitor the freeways for incidents to minimize their adverse impacts on traffic. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the extent to which Road Rangers reduce incident clearance duration (ICD), incident-induced traffic delays (IITDs) and secondary crashes (SCs).

Since ICD distributions are often right-skewed, the study applied quantile regression to relate ICD to influencing factors. Data skewed to the right is usually a result of lower bounds in a data set being extremely low relative to the rest of the data. Data from 28,000 incidents that occurred on freeways in Jacksonville, Florida were analyzed. Of …

Simulation Exploration Of The Potential Of Connected Vehicles In Mitigating Secondary Crashes, Mike Alvin Soloka

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Secondary crashes (SCs) on freeways are a major concern for traffic incident management systems. Studies have shown that their occurrence is significant and can lead to deterioration of traffic flow conditions on freeways in addition to injury and fatalities, albeit their magnitudes are relatively low when compared to primary crashes. Due to the limited nature of crash data in analyzing freeway SCs, surrogate measures provide an alternative for safety analysis for freeway analysis using conflict analysis. Connected Vehicles (CVs) have seen compelling technological advancements since the concept was introduced in the 1990s. In recent years, CVs have emerged as a …

The Operational And Safety Effects Of Heavy Duty Vehicles Platooning, Ahmed Alzahrani

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Although researchers have studied the effects of platooning, most of the work done so far has focused on fuel consumption. There are a few studies that have targeted the impact of platooning on the highway operations and safety. This thesis focuses on the impact of heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) platooning on highway characteristics. Specifically, this study aims at evaluating the effects of platooning of HDVs on capacity, safety, and CO₂ emissions.

This study is based on a hypothetical model that was created using the VISSIM software. VISSIM is a powerful simulation software designed to mimic the field traffic flow …