THE POSITION AND ROLES OF PORTS AND RAILWAYS IN THE EURASIA LAND BRIDGE TRANSPORTATION IN NORTHEAST CHINA

This paper systematically analyzes and proves the favorable factors of utilizing the ports and the railways in Northeast China for the Asia-Europe land bridge transportation. It will be more beneficial to Dalian Port and HaDa (Harbin-Dalian) and Binzhou (Harbin-Manzhouli) railways in Northeast China to the Siberia railway in Russia than 1) to other ports and the corresponding railways in China, 2) to the Nakhodka Port in Russia and the corresponding railways and 3) to the Chongjin Port in North Korea and the corresponding railways. This paper also puts forward the reform measures to adopt the ports and the railways in the northeast region in China for the land bridge transportation and the problems in transportation policies and management systems.     

Reduction of hydroelastic responses of a very-long floating structure by a floating oscillating-water-column breakwater system

The hydroelastic responses of a very-long floating structure (VLFS) placed behind a reverse T-shape freely floating breakwater with a built-in oscillating water column (OWC) chamber are analyzed in two dimensions. The Bernoulli–Euler beam equation is coupled with the equations of rigid and elastic motions of the breakwater and the VLFS. The interaction of waves between the floating rigid breakwater and the elastic VLFS is formulated in a consistent manner. It has been shown numerically that the structural deflections of the VLFS can be reduced significantly by a suitably designed reverse T-shape floating breakwater.     

Numerical study of the motions and drift force of a floating OWC device

The motion and the drift force of a floating OWC (oscillating water column) wave energy device in regular waves are studied taking account of the oscillating surface-pressure due to the pressure drop across the duct of the air chamber. The potential problem inside the chamber is formulated by making use of the Green integral equation associated with the Rankine-type Green function while the outer problem with the Kelvin-type Green function. The added mass, wave damping and excitation coefficients as well as the motion and drift force of the OWC device are calculated for various values of parameter related to the pressure drop.     

Mooring optimization of floating platforms using a genetic algorithm

This paper presents a new procedure for the optimization of the mooring design of floating platforms, in which an automatic design sequence is also established. Regarding the optimization philosophy, the following aspects are dealt with:

• The optimization of the platform heading and its mooring pattern, taking into account the environmental force spreading;

• optimum line length or line tension for each mooring line, associated to the optimization of the mooring line materials and sizes.

Basically, the main goal of this paper is to introduce a new method, which will provide the quickest way to find the best mooring system, defined here as that which minimizes platform responses.A genetic algorithm (GA) is applied in this contribution, and this paper describes exactly the procedure of developing a GA code directed toward the solution of mooring design optimization problems. In order to prove the efficiency and the vast potential of the proposed algorithm as a design tool, sample moorings are analyzed for different environmental conditions and the final results, including the time required to run them, are presented.     

Dynamic Analysis of A Pontoon-Separated Floating Bridge Subjected to A Moving Load

1 .Introduction Since the most significant feature of a movingloadisits mobility,the interaction betweenthe ve-hicle and bridge is very complicated,which can be classified as a coupled vibration problem.There-fore ,much attention has been paid to the dyna…     

传感器电桥电路的非线性修正──用反馈补偿法修正传感器电桥电路的非线性误差

介绍一种反馈补偿法修正传感器电桥电路的非线性。提出反馈补偿原理及应用实例，指出用该方法可获得满意的补偿效果。     

On the estimation of mooring line characteristic resistance for reliability analysis

The main aim of this work is to derive a correct formulation for the characteristic resistance of a mooring line segment with lognormally distributed component resistances and substitute an equation proposed by Vazquez-Hernandez et al. [Vazquez-Hernandez AO, Ellwanger GB, Sagrilo LVS. Reliability-based comparative study for mooring lines design criteria. Appl Ocean Res 2006; 28(6):398–406] in a paper published in this journal, which is not correct. The mooring line is considered as a series system and the resistances of individual components of a line segment are statistically independent and identically distributed; furthermore, the case of normally distributed component resistances is also discussed. A comparison with the corresponding equation proposed by DNV-OS-E301 is given. Results show that the formula proposed by Vazquez-Hernandez et al. [Vazquez-Hernandez AO, Ellwanger GB, Sagrilo LVS. Reliability-based comparative study for mooring lines design criteria. Appl Ocean Res 2006; 28(6):398–406] overestimates quite significantly the characteristic resistance of a mooring line segment.     

How are large western hemisphere warm pools formed?

During the boreal summer the Western Hemisphere warm pool (WHWP) stretches from the eastern North Pacific to the tropical North Atlantic and is a key feature of the climate of the Americas and Africa. In the summers following nine El Niño events during 1950–2000, there have been five instances of extraordinarily large warm pools averaging about twice the climatological annual size. These large warm pools have induced a strengthened divergent circulation aloft and have been associated with rainfall anomalies throughout the western hemisphere tropics and subtropics and with more frequent hurricanes. However, following four other El Niño events large warm pools did not develop, such that the mere existence of El Niño during the boreal winter does not provide the basis for predicting an anomalously large warm pool the following summer.In this paper, we find consistency with the hypothesis that large warm pools result from an anomalous divergent circulation forced by sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the Pacific, the so-called atmospheric bridge. We also find significant explanations for why large warm pools do not always develop. If the El Niño event ends early in the eastern Pacific, the Pacific warm anomaly lacks the persistence needed to force the atmospheric bridge and the Atlantic portion of the warm pool remains normal. If SST anomalies in the eastern Pacific do not last much beyond February of the following year, then the eastern North Pacific portion of the warm pool remains normal. The overall strength of the Pacific El Niño does not appear to be a critical factor. We also find that when conditions favor a developing atmospheric bridge and the winter atmosphere over the North Atlantic conforms to a negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) pattern (as in 1957–58 and 1968–69), the forcing is reinforced and the warm pool is stronger. On the other hand, if a positive NAO pattern develops the warm pool may remain normal even if other circumstances favor the atmospheric bridge, as in 1991–92. Finally, we could find little evidence that interactions internal to the tropical Atlantic are likely to mitigate for or against the formation of the largest warm pools, although they may affect smaller warm pool fluctuations or the warm pool persistence.     

Reliability-based comparative study for mooring lines design criteria

The characteristic environmental load effect for the design of mooring systems of floating units can be defined by means of three procedures: (a) the one associated to an extreme sea state with a given return period, (b) the worst one from a set of sea states on a contour line associated to a return period or (c) the extreme one based on response statistics for a long-term period. This work presents the result of a reliability-based partial safety factor calibration study for a LRFD mooring line design criteria considering the three approaches mentioned above. The calibration exercise is applied to three FPSOs considering North Sea environmental conditions and different water depths: 200, 800 and 3000 m. The mooring systems investigated take into account mooring lines made up of chains and polyester ropes. It is shown that, among all cases investigated, the design procedure based on the long-term response is the one that presents less scattered reliability indices around the target level.     

Response-based method for determining the extreme behaviour of floating offshore platforms

The accurate prediction of extreme excursion and mooring force of floating offshore structures due to multi-variete environmental conditions which requires the joint probability analysis of environmental conditions for the worst case situation is still impractical as the processing of large amount of met-ocean data is required. On the other hand, the simplified multiple design criteria (e.g. the N-year wave with associated winds and currents) recommended by API known as traditional method does lead neither to the N-year platform response nor to the N-year mooring force. Therefore, in order to reduce the level of conservatism as well as uncertainties involved in the traditional method the response-based method can be used as a reliable alternative approach. In this paper this method is described. In order to perform the calculations faster using large databases of sea states, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is designed and employed. In the paper the response-based method is applied to a 200,000 tdw FPSO and the results are discussed.