Optimization Of Imported Iron Ore Shipping And Transportation Network In Yangtze River Delta Region

Nowadays,China has gradually become the world's largest steel producer and consumer country.However,the average grade of iron ore in China is only 31%,and its exploitation is so difficult and expensive that it can not meet the current situation.As a result,China must be dependent on imports.Port conditions are superior and the economic scale is huge in Yangtze River Delta,where it is gradually becoming the main way of China's imports of iron ore unloading.In 2008,the Yangtze River Delta port group received a total of 126 million tons of iron ore discharge,approximately 24.38% of the national total amount of unloading.In this paper,we take the import of iron ore in the Yangtze River Delta as the research object to optimize Yangtze River Delta shipping network of imported iron ore.First of all,we analyze imported iron ore and transportation network status of China and Yangtze River Delta region.Then,we use the GM(1,1)gray prediction model,which is the most widely used in gray theory,to predict China's Yangtze River Delta imports of iron ore and unloading capacity.The forecast results show that China's Yangtze River Delta region iron ore imports and unloading volume will remain going up in the next four years from 2017 to 2020.And eventually they will reach 323 and 696 million tons by 2020 respectively.In order to obtain the better optimization of Yangtze River Delta region shipping network,we have visited the relevant Yangtze River Delta port and noticed that this region shipping network has the following problems: insufficient capacity of the discharge ports,large-scale special iron ore terminal shortage,low efficient collection and distribution system,unitary function of logistics nodes.We use water transportation economy model to optimize multi-condition,multi-constrained Yangtze River shipping network based on the water transportation economy theory.Then we calculate and compare the total cost of unit transportation with different tonnage and different transportation distances.As a result,we obtain the cost-optimized transportation path,where the total cost of unit transportation can be saved by 6.84%-18.50% through optimization.In conclusion,after we use water transportation economic model to optimize theYangtze River Delta shipping network,positive effect on the cost savings,the layout of imported iron ore ports and the optimization of shipping and transportation network structure are obviously clear.However,due to the shortage of the materials available for research,the result may be uncertain,which needs more future studies.