Yang Cai

Date of Graduation

1996

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Committee Chair

David Martinelli

Committee Co-Chair

Wen G. Wang

Committee Member

Larry Banta

Committee Member

Wafik Iskander

Committee Member

Ronald Eck

Abstract

In this study, the Transit Automata (TA) model, a Cellular Automata (CA) based spatial model, has been developed. It includes a set of cells, states, rules, events, and a system clock. In contrast to CA, a TA model fragments the problem space along restricted routes. All cells on the routes are treated as equal and controlled by rules. Like CA models, an initial configuration of a TA model can be embedded and can be dynamically changed during the runtime. Furthermore, user-controlled events and stochastic events are used to trigger the discrete events of the model. A TA model is a modeling tool to formulate automatic transport control problems, such as spatial arrangement, motion control logic and visualization of operations. TA can also be extended to become a Petri net so that the concurrent control logic can be analyzed by simulating the net. TA models have been used to formulate real world automatic transport problems. Two cases, the automatic transit system operation and the walking beam furnace system operation, are studied in this dissertation. It is found that TA models are useful to engineers during the early design stage, when the formal mathematical models or simulation packages are not available due to a lack of precise data or design details.

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