Hydraulic Traffic System Design
Abstract:
In today’s time, busy traffic in towns and cities have become an issue of concern for most of the governing authorities. The situation worsens at
three-way or four-way junctions especially during the rush hours when people have to wait for hours to get past a junction. With advances in technology,
today most of the cities have automated time regulated traffic signals at most busy junctions, which allow the traffic to pass at intervals of one or two
minutes and help maintaining traffic without a traffic police or a manually controlled traffic signal. However, there are many shortcomings to this
technology especially when it comes to junctions with lesser traffic at one of the branches relative to the others. If this technology gets implemented in such situations, it would create unnecessary wastage of time and would lead to more traffic build-up in the busier branch(s) of the junction. Since every branch opens up for a minute the one with relatively lesser traffic would unnecessarily be opened for a minute after a regular interval even though there may not be sufficient traffic incoming from that branch within a given time frame. Because of this difficulty, in India, many such junctions are still
controlled by traffic police of manually controlled traffic signals. However,the hydraulic traffic signal design minimises this difficulty by leading to an
automatic mechanism in which any particular branch of a junction gets opened only when the traffic in it exceeds a pre-set number.
The design basically, uses the Pascal’s law of Fluid Mechanics, i.e. whenever pressure is applied to a fluid it gets distributed uniformly in
it. So if at a point a force is applied to the fluid acting over a particular cross sectional area as the input, it can be diminished or magnified by
decreasing or increasing the cross sectional area at the output end respectively.
According to the design, an underground fluid section in constructed beneath the road in a branch leading to a junction. The section is filled with a fluid with very less compressibility and has two movable openings, one just before the junction beneath the road and the other leading to the traffic signal
mechanism.
The basic idea is that whenever the number of cars or the load due to the cars in a branch of a junction increases beyond a particular limit (let’s say ten cars), the corresponding force exerted by the fluid at the other end leads to the closing of a circuit which turns on the green light of the traffic signal for
that branch and turns on the red light for the other two. Now, after this we let that branch be kept open for 40-45 seconds after which the next branch to be opened is decided on the basis of the number of cars or loads in the other two branches. Whichever of the two branches has the particular load limit exceeded if opened and traffic is let flow in. In this way, the branch which has lesser outflow of traffic doesn’t unnecessarily open up after a regular time interval. Instead it opens only if the number of cars in it has exceeded a particular quantity; otherwise the other heavier traffic branches are kept opened. This kind of a traffic signal is supposed to be put into action in situations where all the three branches of a junction do not have equivalent traffic flow, for
example, a junction in a highway
Below we will find the ppt version of our project that won us 3rd prize in NIT Silchar Mechanical week of 2012.
In today’s time, busy traffic in towns and cities have become an issue of concern for most of the governing authorities. The situation worsens at
three-way or four-way junctions especially during the rush hours when people have to wait for hours to get past a junction. With advances in technology,
today most of the cities have automated time regulated traffic signals at most busy junctions, which allow the traffic to pass at intervals of one or two
minutes and help maintaining traffic without a traffic police or a manually controlled traffic signal. However, there are many shortcomings to this
technology especially when it comes to junctions with lesser traffic at one of the branches relative to the others. If this technology gets implemented in such situations, it would create unnecessary wastage of time and would lead to more traffic build-up in the busier branch(s) of the junction. Since every branch opens up for a minute the one with relatively lesser traffic would unnecessarily be opened for a minute after a regular interval even though there may not be sufficient traffic incoming from that branch within a given time frame. Because of this difficulty, in India, many such junctions are still
controlled by traffic police of manually controlled traffic signals. However,the hydraulic traffic signal design minimises this difficulty by leading to an
automatic mechanism in which any particular branch of a junction gets opened only when the traffic in it exceeds a pre-set number.
The design basically, uses the Pascal’s law of Fluid Mechanics, i.e. whenever pressure is applied to a fluid it gets distributed uniformly in
it. So if at a point a force is applied to the fluid acting over a particular cross sectional area as the input, it can be diminished or magnified by
decreasing or increasing the cross sectional area at the output end respectively.
According to the design, an underground fluid section in constructed beneath the road in a branch leading to a junction. The section is filled with a fluid with very less compressibility and has two movable openings, one just before the junction beneath the road and the other leading to the traffic signal
mechanism.
The basic idea is that whenever the number of cars or the load due to the cars in a branch of a junction increases beyond a particular limit (let’s say ten cars), the corresponding force exerted by the fluid at the other end leads to the closing of a circuit which turns on the green light of the traffic signal for
that branch and turns on the red light for the other two. Now, after this we let that branch be kept open for 40-45 seconds after which the next branch to be opened is decided on the basis of the number of cars or loads in the other two branches. Whichever of the two branches has the particular load limit exceeded if opened and traffic is let flow in. In this way, the branch which has lesser outflow of traffic doesn’t unnecessarily open up after a regular time interval. Instead it opens only if the number of cars in it has exceeded a particular quantity; otherwise the other heavier traffic branches are kept opened. This kind of a traffic signal is supposed to be put into action in situations where all the three branches of a junction do not have equivalent traffic flow, for
example, a junction in a highway
Below we will find the ppt version of our project that won us 3rd prize in NIT Silchar Mechanical week of 2012.
ppt.pptx | |
File Size: | 189 kb |
File Type: | pptx |