Computer‐Aided Design for Horizontal Alignment
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 115, Issue 4
Abstract
An accepted approach in conforming to the design standards for modern highways is to use a combination of arcs of circles and segments of clothoid spirals. The design of a horizontal alignment for a highway centerline can be accomplished manually by using circular and clothoid templates. This article illustrates how a computer may be used to automatically decompose a proposed centerline into arcs of circles and segments of clothoid spirals. True clothoidal transition spirals for the horizontal alignment of a highway centerline can be conveniently incorporated in interactive graphics‐based computer‐aided highway‐design software by using a control polygon approach. A control polygon approach applied to B‐spline and Bézier curves has already been used successfull in computer‐aided design for manufacture and has the advantage of providing a simple user interface. This article demonstrates that a similar approach is feasible for computer‐aided design of horizontal alignments. A description of prototype software as well as a demonstration example are included.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
AASHTO. (1984). A policy on geometric design of highways and streets. American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C.
2.
Baass, K. G. (1984). “The use of clothoid templates in highway design.” Transp. Forum, 1(3), 47–52.
3.
Bézier, P. (1970). Numerical control—Mathematics and applications. John Wiley & Sons, New York, N.Y.
4.
Boehm, W. (1987). “Bézier representation of airfoils.” Comput. Aided Geomet. Des., 4(1–2), 17–22.
5.
Boehm, W., Farin, G., and Kahmann, J. (1984). “A survey of curve and surface methods in CAGD.” Comput. Aided Geomet. Des., 1(1), 1–60.
6.
Coquillart, S. (1987). “A control point based sweeping technique.” Comput. Graphics Appl., IEEE, 7(11), 36–45.
7.
Faux, I. D., and Pratt, M. J. (1979). Computational geometry for design and manufacture. Ellis Horwood, Chichester, U.K.
8.
Hartman, P. (1957). “The highway spiral for combining curves of different radii.” Trans., ASCE, 122, 389–409.
9.
Hickerson, T. F. (1964). Route location and design. McGraw‐Hill, New York, N.Y.
10.
Hoschek, J. (1985). “Offset curves in the plane.” Comput. Aided Des., 17(2), 77–82.
11.
Meek, D. S., and Walton, D. J. (1989). “The use of Cornu spirals in drawing planar curves of controlled curvature.” J. Computat. Appl. Math., 25(1), 69–78.
12.
Meyer, C. F., and Gibson, D. W. (1980). Route surveying and design. Harper and Row, New York, N.Y.
13.
Nielson, G. M. (1986). “Rectangular Nu‐splines.” Comput. Graphics Appl., IEEE, 6(2), 35–40.
14.
RTAC. (1976). Geometric design standards for Canadian roads and streets. Roads and Transportation Association of Canada, Ottawa, Canada.
15.
Walton, D. J., and Meek, D. S. (1988). “Curvature bounds for planar B‐spline curve segments.” Comput. Aided Des., 20(3), 146–150.
16.
Walton, D. J. (1987). “Contour map editing on a microcomputer.” Microcomput. Civ. Engrg., 2(4), 1–7.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 ASCE.
History
Published online: Dec 1, 1989
Published in print: Dec 1989
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.