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METHODOLOGY FOR URBAN AREA SNOW REMOVAL USING NEW MACHINE AND PERFORMANCE-BASED ANALYSIS
Title
METHODOLOGY FOR URBAN AREA SNOW REMOVAL USING NEW MACHINE AND PERFORMANCE-BASED ANALYSIS
Creator
Neishapouri, Mohammad
Date
2015, 2015-12
Description
The need for alternative methods that facilitate removal of snow on urban streets with minimal pavement and bridge damages, vehicles...
Show moreThe need for alternative methods that facilitate removal of snow on urban streets with minimal pavement and bridge damages, vehicles corrosions, and environmental impacts due to use of chemicals and salts has been growing over time. Conversely, this issue has not been thoroughly investigated. This is particularly true for large urban areas where the snow removal machine and background traffic share already congested streets. In this research, a new methodology is introduced for effectively managing snow removal that involves new machine and performance-based analysis. The new machine aims to melt snow and ice using technically adequate mechanical system including special engine, heat pumps and very fast ventilation pumps in order to suck and discharge water from pavement surface to road sides. The performance-based analysis employs a life cycle cost analysis approach to estimate reductions in expenditures to pavements and bridges, and vehicle corrosions of background traffic as a result of using new machine for snow melting instead of using chemicals and salts; and an optimization model for effective dispatching of new machine across a large area, leading to a significant level of travel timing savings to the background traffic owning to shorter duration oftravel way closures. The proposed methodology is implemented in a computational study to examine the current snow removal programs in the city of Chicago for a typical winter day involving moderate and severe snowfalls that correspond to its 50 percent and 100 percent programs for filed dispatching one-half and all snow plow trucks. Compared with the use of snow removal trucks coupled with chemicals and salts, the use of new machine could result in better equivalent annualized savings as benefits component and less amount of cost components which cause the project implementation has benefit to cost ratio Xl11The need for alternative methods that facilitate removal of snow on urban streets with minimal pavement and bridge damages, vehicles corrosions, and environmental impacts due to use of chemicals and salts has been growing over time. Conversely, this issue has not been thoroughly investigated. This is particularly true for large urban areas where the snow removal machine and background traffic share already congested streets. In this research, a new methodology is introduced for effectively managing snow removal that involves new machine and performance-based analysis. The new machine aims to melt snow and ice using technically adequate mechanical system including special engine, heat pumps and very fast ventilation pumps in order to suck and discharge water from pavement surface to road sides. The performance-based analysis employs a life cycle cost analysis approach to estimate reductions in expenditures to pavements and bridges, and vehicle corrosions of background traffic as a result of using new machine for snow melting instead of using chemicals and salts; and an optimization model for effective dispatching of new machine across a large area, leading to a significant level of travel timing savings to the background traffic owning to shorter duration oftravel way closures. The proposed methodology is implemented in a computational study to examine the current snow removal programs in the city of Chicago for a typical winter day involving moderate and severe snowfalls that correspond to its 50 percent and 100 percent programs for filed dispatching one-half and all snow plow trucks. Compared with the use of snow removal trucks coupled with chemicals and salts, the use of new machine could result in better equivalent annualized savings as benefits component and less amount of cost components which cause the project implementation has benefit to cost ratio respectively 2.15 and 2 by CPI analysis and 3 and 3.04 by CCI analysis. Compared with the current practice of filed dispatching of snow plow trucks or new machine for snow removal, the optimization model for vehicle dispatching could further improve the snow removal productivity by 2-4 percent for the 100 percent program and 3-8 percent for the 50 percent program, respectively.
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, December 2015
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