Simulation Optimization Research On Multimodal Transport System On Container Terminal

With the incorporation and globalization of the economy, volume of containers traffic keeps growing rapidly, which has brought great challenges as well as the opportunities to the development of Chinese container terminals. Container flows worldwide are growing very rapidly and it is expected that this growth will continue during the next decades, container terminals have to uplift themselves to meet more hard challenges. It is indispensable for ports to enhance their operation efficiency with reasonable planning. So it is very significant to make researches on port container logistics system.A review of how simulation and optimisation techniques have been applied to help and improve the management of intermodal container terminals is presented. According to features of port container logistics system, this dissertation researched simulation and optimization of the system as follows.Firstly, it analyzes the the multimodal operation process on container terminal. According to the desire of the transport modes including the sea,road and rail, and briefly describes its facilities, layout and activities.Secondly, based on the ARENA simulation software package, a generic simulation model structure for the design and evaluation of multimodal systems for container handling is proposed. The paper animates the model of the multimodal system on container terminal with 2D animation tools, and this model is constructed by combining four basic functions: berth operations, gate operations, yard operations, train operations. Operations between yard and gate which container truck pass in and out of as well as operations for piling up and transporting containers from forth yard to rear yard and form the rear to the forth, then the working flow of 3D Simulation is proposed based on Arena 3DPlayer.Thirdly, from the aspect of whole operation process, based on Hybrid Flow Shop Scheduling problem a mathematical model model is developed to optimize the operation sequence of quay cranes,yard trailers and yard cranes simultaneously. A simulation optimization method for operation scheduling in container terminals is proposed. Because genetic algorithm for parallel machine scheduling and processing of container has a better convergence rate, an optimization algorithm based on genetic algorithm is designed to improve the computation efficiency. After that, a Decision Support System is then developed via VB,VBA and SQL.