Several pavement failures have been observed to be initiated at or near the surface of the hot-mix asphalt layers and some of them propagate downward through the surface layer (top-down cracking). These modes of failure are affected by heavy vehicular loading configuration, pavement structure and their interaction at the tire-pavement contact. This paper documents an experimental investigation ...

Aedes albopictus were reared in different containers: a tree hole, a bamboo stump and an auto tire. The total times from egg hatching to adult emergence were of 19.6, 27.3 and 37.5 days, respectively, according to the container. The first, second and third-instar larvae presented growth periods with highly similar durations. The fourth-instar larvae was longer than the others stages. The pupati...

The superior oil absorption capacity of recycled polypropylene (PP) fiber and waste tire powder were used to recover spilled engine oil. We used ASTM F726-99 method to evaluate oil adsorbing capability of PP fiber and found it to have a large, rapid oil sorption capacity. However, its lack of elasticity dramatically limited that capacity after repeated use. Tire powder, which absorbs less oil m...

Vehicle Dynamics Control (VDC) systems require the information about system variables, which cannot be directly measured, e.g., the wheel slip or the vehicle side-slip angle. This paper presents a new concept for the vehicle state estimation under assumption that the vehicle is equipped with the standard VDC sensors. It is proposed to utilize an Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) for estimation purp...

This study evaluated two different support materials (ground tire and polyethylene terephthalate [PET]) for biohydrogen production in an anaerobic fluidized bed reactor (AFBR) treating synthetic wastewater containing glucose (4000 mg L(-1)). The AFBR, which contained either ground tire (R1) or PET (R2) as support materials, were inoculated with thermally pretreated anaerobic sludge and operated...

Global competition today is forcing tire-manufacturing industries to implement continuous improvement systems that can reduce cost and improve product quality. Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers play a key role in the quality of vulcanized tire. This paper presents a novel method for the performance assessment and controller tuning of temperature control loops in a tire vulcaniz...

This paper investigates kinetic behavior of a planetary rover with attention to tire-soil traction mechanics and articulated body dynamics, and thereby study the control when the rover travels over natural rough terrain. Experiments are carried out with a rover test bed to observe the physical phenomena of soils and to model the traction mechanics, using the tire slip ratio as a state variable....

This paper deals with the interface-relevant activity of a vehicle integrated intelligent safety system (ISS) that includes an airbag deployment decision system (ADDS) and a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS). A program is developed in LabWindows/CVI, using C for prototype implementation. The prototype is primarily concerned with the interconnection between hardware objects such as a load c...

A question of major importance in the auto industry concerns the modeling and improved design of vehicle tires. Tire performance affects the handling performance of the automobile. Many of the variables on which tire performance depends can be calculated from the load and deflection of the spindle in the suspension system for each wheel. The question of tire performance thus becomes a question ...

Most active devices focused on vehicle stability concern on-road cars and cannot be applied satisfactorily in an off-road context, since the variability and the non-linearities of tire/ground contact are often neglected. In previous work, a rollover indicator devoted to light all-terrain vehicles accounting for these phenomena has been proposed. It is based on the prediction of the lateral load...