A level crossing on a Japanese Railways line was improved from the human factors point of view. Improved features of the warning system installed there are outlined and effects of the changes are reported. Various good effects of the renewal were found in visibility of the warning lights, appraisal by road users, and video-recorded crossing behaviour. It was concluded that the renewal was highly successful and we advised the Japanese Railways to improve other level crossings similarly.
This paper presents the methodology to obtain optimal reservoir operation for water supply by use of Drought Duration Curve (DDC rule curve). Optimum DDC rule curve is chosen in comparison with drought safety indices. New method named Staged DDC rule curve is adapted to lessen the possibility of reservoir exhaustion and excessive water saving. Inflow forecasting can be incorporated with DDC rule curve for the improvement of reservoir operation.
A series of shaking table tests with irregular wave were carried out to investigate the seismic stability of reinforced-soil retaining and conventional type retaining walls. In these tests, reinforced-soil retaining wall models showed a ductile behavior compared to conventional type retaining wall model. When the conventional type wall started to tilt, the subsoil reaction force at the toe of wall suddenly decreased due to loss of bearing capacity. On the other hand, tensile force in the reinforcement of reinforced-soil walls was still mobilized even if the wall tilted outward largely. Though the measured angle of failure plane and the measured seismic earth pressure became close to the theoretical values (Mononobe-Okabe theory) by considering the response acceleration of the sliding soil wedge, they didn't agree completely. This may be because the actual sliding soil wedge is not a perfect rigid body as assumed in Mononobe-Okabe theory, and the deformation characteristics of sand are different under static load and dynamic load conditions.
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