Civil Engineering

To improve the traffic flow at the Moolakadai intersection along Grant Northern Trunk road of north Chennai, traffic survey is conducted which include road inventory and volume count along the various arms towards the intersection. Volume accumulation curves are developed and peak volume and peak time is obtained. From the analysis it is found that the peak volume is of 9556 passenger car equivalence during 18 to 19 hours at this intersection. Volume to capacity ratio is found greater than one which makes high level of congestion and poor level of service. To manage this Transport System Management concepts are suggested in various scenarios which may reduce the volume lesser than the capacity.

The paper presents some taxonomic and ecological observations on Quinqueloculina cristata (Millett), a rare miliolid foraminifer recorded from the inner shelf sediments of the Bay of Bengal, off Karikkattukuppam, near Chennai (formerly Madras), on the southeast coast of India. Although this species was recorded for the first time from Indian waters (off Cochin)
nearly three decades ago, there have been no subsequent reports of this miliolid from off the west or east coasts of the subcontinent. This paper brings to light for the first time the existence of this taxon on the inner shelf off the southeast coast and extends its regional and latitudinal distribution by a few degrees further north. It also adds one more species to the list of foraminiferal taxa common to the inner shelves off the east and west coasts of India, further emphasizing the futility of a rigid distinction between the east and west coast faunas.

Rainfall runoff is one of the important hydrological variables in determining land and water resources application. Curve Number method is widely used and efficient method to estimate the infiltration characteristic of the watershed in accordance with the land use/land cover property and soil property. In this study to estimate the rainfall runoff modeling in this study area with an area of 152.81 sq km using Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) method and GIS. The estimated amount average annual rainfall 1322.29mm from 1999 to 2013.The runoff varied from 285 mm-4053mm, which is corresponds to 61.6% of annual average rainfall of Thiruvalur district. These details are used for better watershed management and conservation purpose.