Ship Selection Of Container Transport Based On Trade Goods Spatial And Temporal Fluctuation

Large container vessel has economies of scale benefit, which is the reason for container vessels large-scale trend. Lines, ports and transpot goods will affect the economies of scale benefit realized by large container vessels. The international trade goods fluctuation determines the distribution of spatial and temporal in container transport, and further affects the ship selection, which affect the realization of the large container ships’economies of scale benefit. This article studys the container vessels large-scale problem from the perspective of container ship selection.This article based on the spatial and temporal fluctuations of international trade in goods, sets up three time window models for ship selection. The models optimize ship types, frequency and numbers in the meanwhile, as to minimize the total cost for container transport. The thress models are based on the characteristics of point-to-point network, port calling network, shaft radial network. Then this article uses point-to-point routes between ningbo and13different ports, the routes among Far East, Europe and North America and the shaft radial network routes among22ports for empirical analysis. The results show that no matter what form the route network is, the container ship selection is closely linked to the international trade cargo and its spatial and temporal fluctuation characteristics. Different routes have different spatial and temporal fluctuation characteristics, so that its best ship type is different. The study also found that under different network, the container transportation cost, which has a minimum, will decreases firstly and increase finally as the ship size increasing. And the ship form with minimum corresponding course should be adopted by the best ship type. Through the ship size-transport cost curve, it can clearly analysis the large container ships’ economies of scale benefit, under different network and different demand,In addition, this paper analysis the competitiveness of the maersk "3E" container ships under different networks, which is based on the three ship selection models. Calculation results show that the "3E" has different competitiveness under different network, which is stong in the radial network’main lines, certain in the port calling network and weak in the point-to-ponit network.