Transition zones in railway tracks are locations with considerable changes in the rail-supporting structure. Typically, they are located near engineering structures, such as bridges, culverts and tunnels. In such locations, severe differential settlements often occur due to the different material properties and structure behavior. Without timely maintenance, the differential settlement may lead...

Speeding is a major contributing factor to traffic crashes and frequently happens in areas where there is a mutation in speed limits, such as the transition zones that connect urban areas from rural areas. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of an in-vehicle audio warning system and lit speed limit sign on preventing drivers' speeding behavior in transition zones. A high-fid...

We consider a dynamical system that exhibits transition chains of invariant tori alternating with Birkhoff zones of instability in a 2-dimensional center manifold. It is known that there exist orbits that shadow the transition chains. It is also known that there exist orbits that cross the Birkhoff zones of instability. We describe a topological mechanism that allows one to join together the tw...

The performance of any finite element (FE) structural analysis is directly related to the global number of nodes and degrees of freedom (DOF) of the discretized structure and mesh distribution attributes. It is obvious that the appropriate numerical analysis needs finer elements in the zone of interest, e.g. zone of high stress concentration and intensity, and coarser elements for farther porti...

A spatial modeling technique is proposed to represent boundary uncertainty or gradation on area class maps using a simple polygon tessellation with designated zones of indeterminacy, or transition zones. The transition zone can be conceptualized as a dual of the epsilon band, but is more flexible and allows for a wide range of polygonal configurations, including polygons with sinuous boundaries...