Means of Transport and Equipment
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Higher School of Transport 1 Means of Transport and Equipment A. Means of Transport 1. Transport: then, now, and tomorrow Mobility is a basic human need. From the times immemorial, everyone travels either for food or leisure. A closely associated need is the transport of raw materials to a manufacturing unit or finished goods for consumption. Transportation fulfills these basic needs of humanity. Transport or transportation is the movement of people and goods from one place to another. The term is derived from the Latin trans ("across") and portare ("to carry"). Transportation plays a major role in the development of the human civilization. For instance, one could easily observe the strong correlation between the evolution of human settlement and the proximity of transport facilities. Also, there is a strong correlation between the quality of transport facilities and standard of living, because of which society places a great expectation from transportation facilities. In other words, the solution to transportation problems must be analytically based, economically sound, socially credible, environmentally sensitive, and practically acceptable and sustainable. Alternatively, the transportation solution should be safe, rapid, comfortable, convenient, economical, and eco-friendly for both men and material. Industries which have the business of providing equipment, actual transport, transport of people or goods and services used in transport of goods or people make up a large broad and important sector of most national economies, and are collectively referred to as transport industries. Aspects of transport The field of transport has several aspects: loosely they can be divided into a triad of infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Infrastructure includes the transport networks (roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, pipelines, etc.) that are used, as well as the nodes or terminals (such as airports, railway stations, bus stations and seaports). The vehicles generally ride on the networks, such as automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, aircrafts. The operations deal with the way the vehicles are operated on the network and the procedures set for this purpose including the legal environment (Laws, Codes, Regulations, etc.) Policies, such as how to finance the system (for Higher School of Transport 2 example, the use of tolls or gasoline taxes) may be considered part of the operations. Broadly speaking, the design of networks are the domain of civil engineering and urban planning, the design of vehicles of mechanical engineering and specialized sub fields such as nautical engineering and aerospace engineering, and the operations are usually specialized, though might appropriately belong to operations research or systems engineering. 2. Modes and categories Mode of transport is a general term for the different kinds of transport facilities that are often used to transport people or cargo. Where more than one mode of transport is used for a journey, or for transport analysis, the journey can be described as multi-modal. A transport mode is a combination of the following: • Traffic infrastructure: traffic routes, networks, nodes (stations, terminals), etc. • Vehicles and containers: trucks, wagons, ships, aircraft and trains. • A stationary or mobile workforce • Propulsion system and power supply (traction) • Operations: driving, management, traffic signals, railway switching, air traffic control, etc. Examples of modes and categories of transport • Animal powered transport • Air transport o Aircraft o Airship o Balloon o Hang glider o Helicopter • Human-powered transport o Cyclist (Cycling) o Pedestrian (walking) o Rickshaw • Ship transport o Boat o Ship o Submarine • Rail transport o Metro o Tram o Train • Road transport o Bus o Car o Motorcycle o Truck • Other o Cable car (disambiguation) o Escalator o Lift o People mover o Spacecraft Higher School of Transport 3 Vehicles Vehicles are non-living means of transportation. They are most often man-made (e.g. bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, and aircraft), although some other means of transportation, which are not made by man, can also be called vehicles; examples include icebergs and floating tree trunks. Vehicles may be propelled by animals, e.g. a chariot or an ox-cart. However, animals on their own, though used as a means of transportation, are not called vehicles. This includes humans carrying another human, for example a child or a disabled person. Vehicles that do not travel on land are often called crafts, such as watercraft, sailcraft, aircraft, hovercraft and spacecraft 3. Road transport The first forms of road transport were horses, oxen or even humans carrying goods over dirt tracks that often followed game trails. As commerce increased, the tracks were often flattened or widened to accommodate the activities. Later, the travois, a frame used to drag loads, was developed. The wheel came still later, probably preceded by the use of logs as rollers. With the advent of the Roman Empire, there was a need for armies to be able to travel quickly from one area to another, and the roads that existed were often muddy, which greatly delayed the movement of large masses of troops. To resolve this issue, the Romans built great roads. The Roman roads used deep roadbeds of crushed stone as an underlying layer to ensure that they kept dry, as the water would flow out from the crushed stone, instead of becoming mud in clay soils. During the Industrial Revolution, and because of the increased commerce that came with it, improved roadways became imperative. The problem was rain combined with dirt roads created commerce-miring mud. John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836) designed the first modern highways. He developed an inexpensive paving material of soil and stone aggregate (known as macadam), and he embanked roads a few feet higher than the surrounding terrain to cause water to drain away from the surface. Various systems had been developed over centuries to reduce bogging and dust in cities, including cobblestones and wooden paving. Tar-bound macadam (tarmac) was applied to macadam roads towards the end of the 19th century in cities such as Paris. In the early 20th century tarmac and concrete paving were extended into the countryside. Today roadways are principally asphalt or concrete. Both are based on McAdam's concept of stone aggregate in a binder, asphalt cement or Portland cement respectively. Asphalt is known as a flexible pavement, one that slowly will "flow" under the pounding of traffic. Concrete is a rigid pavement, which can take heavier loads but is more expensive and requires more carefully prepared subbase. So, generally, major roads are concrete and local roads are asphalt. Often concrete roads are covered with a thin layer of asphalt to create a wearing surface. Higher School of Transport 4 Automobile Karl Benz's "Velo" Ford Model T, 1927, The 1955 Citroën DS; model (1894) - entered regarded as the first revolutionary visual design into the first automobile affordable automobile and technological innovation race An automobile (also motor car or simply car) is a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods. However, the term is far from precise. An automobile powered by an Otto gasoline engine was built in Germany by Karl Benz in 1885 and granted a patent in the following year. Although several other engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach and Siegfried Marcus) were working on the problem at about the same time, Benz is generally credited with the invention of the modern automobile. Approximately 25 of Benz's vehicles were built before 1893, when his first four-wheeler was introduced. They were powered with four-stroke engines of his own design. Emile Roger of France, already producing Benz engines under license, now added the Benz automobile to his line of products. Because France was more open to the early automobiles, more were built and sold in France through Roger than Benz sold in Germany. From 1890 to 1895 about 30 vehicles were built by Daimler and his assistant, Maybach, either at the Daimler works or in the Hotel Hermann, where they set up shop after falling out with their backers. Benz and Daimler seem to have been unaware of each other's early work and worked independently. In 1890, Emile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with Daimler engines, and so laid the foundation of the motor industry in France. The first American car with a gasoline internal combustion engine supposedly was designed in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York, who applied for a patent on an automobile in 1879. In Britain there had been several attempts to build steam cars with varying degrees of success with Thomas Rickett even attempting a production run in 1860. Santler from Malvern is recognized by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as having made the first petrol-powered car in the country in 1894 followed by Frederick William Lanchester in 1895 but these were both one-offs. The first production vehicles came from the Daimler Motor Company, founded by Harry J. Lawson in 1896, and making their first cars in 1897. In 1892, Rudolf Diesel got a patent for a "New Rational Combustion Engine". In 1897 he built the first Diesel Engine. Steam, electric, and gasoline-powered autos competed for decades, with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s. The large-scale, production line manufacturing of affordable automobiles was debuted by Ransom Olds at his Oldsmobile factory in 1902. This assembly line concept was then greatly expanded by Henry Ford in the 1910s. Development of Higher School of Transport 5 automotive technology was rapid, due in part to the hundreds of small manufacturers competing to gain the world's attention.