Research On Continuous Berth Allocation And Quay Crane Assignment Problem In Container Terminals

Transportation has a leading and strategic important role and position in the development of the national economy.The container terminal is a transportation hub for international maritime transportation.Based on the trend of increasing container port throughput year by year and larger vessels,the port’s loading and unloading efficiency and navigation capacity are limited.Therefore,in order to improve the operation efficiency of the port,this thesis studies the berth allocation and quay crane assignment problem.Firstly,this thesis introduces the layout and production scheduling of container ports,and describes the berth allocation problem,quay crane assignment problem and berth allocation and quay crane assignment problem.Addressed in this thesis is the continuous berth allocation and quay crane assignment specific problem,where the kind of berth,the size of and vessels,the number of quay cranes,the dynamic vessels and noncrossing constraints of quay cranes are comprehensively considered.A mixed integer linear programming model of this problem is established,aiming at minimizing the total stay time and delay penalty of vessels.The effectiveness of the model is verified by the CPLEX commercial.Secondly,considering the factors of vessel’s berthing position preference and mutual interference between quay cranes,a model of berth allocation and quay crane assignment problem is established in this thesis.To solve the model,the continuous berth is separated into discrete segments via a discretization strategy.Thereafter,a large neighborhood search algorithm composed of random removal operator and relaxed sortingbased insertion operator,and a backtracking comparison-based constraint repair strategy are proposed.The effectiveness of the model and algorithm presented is verified via real-life instances with different characteristics,and the performances of different combinations of removal operators and insertion operators in the large neighborhood search algorithmic framework are analyzed.Finally,this thesis presents a dynamic berth allocation and crane assignment specific problem when unscheduled vessels arrive at the port,which is branded the berth allocation and quay crane assignment specific problem with unscheduled vessels.A rolling-horizon based method is proposed to decompose the berth allocation and quay crane assignment specific problem with unscheduled vessels into a multi-stage static decision berth allocation and quay crane assignment specific problem,wherein a rescheduling margin-based hybrid rolling-horizon optimization method is developed by incorporating the event-driven and periodical rolling-horizon strategies as the urgency of dynamic events is evaluated.At every stage,the problem is efficiently solved by the proposed adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm.Case studies with different problem characteristics are conducted to prove the effectiveness of the rolling horizon optimization strategy and ALNS algorithm proposed in this thesis.