The Impact of Tunnel Resilience on Transportation Networks

REU: Underground Infrastructure REU | AUTHOR: Erin Bowie – Arkansas State University

MENTOR: Shiling Pei – Colorado School of Mines

ABSTRACT

Due to a lack of data around vehicle traffic patterns in tunnels around the United States, it was proposed that a system be created to help simulate what traffic patterns might look like through any length of tunnel. Utilizing MatLab, a traffic simulation code was created. With variables for both static and dynamic movement of a vehicle a real simulation of car movement can be achieved. Stating simple, the vehicles are moved across a one lane highway. The static variables were specific to each vehicle and were chosen in a almost random form. The dynamic variables are the changing factors of vehicles, the position and velocity and acceleration that all change as time changes. To understand what dynamic variables would be need a decision tree was created, illustrating how a vehicle moves when in relation to another car that it cannot go around. The main decision needed to be made was between acceleration and braking. With only one lane the number of acceleration scenarios were limited, using these scenarios multiple ‘if statements’ were created to allow for accelerating and braking between the vehicles of the simulation. A one vehicle simulation was first to be ran, once the code was reevaluated and the movement of the vehicle that of a real car, future steps were easy to identify. The next steps would be to start adding multiple lanes to allow for more vehicle movement as well as environmental factors to allow the highway to be run through a tunnel.