Container Allocation Optimization Of Center Terminal Yard Under Rail-sea Intermodal Transportation

Container transportation is a modern transportation way, it plays an important role in the international and domestic trade. The container sea-rail transportation is an important organization form of container multimodal transportation. It combines the advantages of railway transportation and shipping transportation and has the advantages of safety, convenience, energy saving, environmental protection and so on. It is an important development direction of freight transportation. Center terminal is an important platform for container multimodal transportation. Its operation efficiency has the important influence to the transport quality, comprehensive efficiency and service level of sea-rail intermodal center terminal. The block allocation strategy in center terminal yard affects the number of relocation and then affects operation efficiency of the center terminal yard directly. This has become a paramount concerned problem in academic circles and numerous ports.This article bases on such a problem and makes a study on container allocation problem in sea-rail intermodal center terminal in the mode of mixed stowage. Firstly, this paper analyzes the characteristic of the rail-sea intermodal center terminal management. And confirms the container storage location in main yard and the loading and unloading sequence of crane for main optimization object in the center terminal management. Secondly, according to characteristic of the container allocation process in central terminal designs the optimized allocation strategy to minimize the number of stacked containers in unloading containers process. Because the number of relocation containers is hard to optimize and the stacked containers will become to relocation containers in the future, therefore, this paper establish a dynamic container allocation model to minimize the number of stacked containers and optimize the container allocation process. Thirdly, design a container allocation algorithm based on the heuristic algorithm and the characteristic of container allocation problem to solve this model. This paper compares the optimization allocation strategy and lowest allocation strategy which always used in the center terminal yard now. According to analysis of the experimental results in different circumstances shows that the optimized allocation strategy is better than the lowest allocation strategy. The data also shows that the model and algorithm are effective and efficient in solving this problem. Finally, the effects of containers frequency and the size of bay to the result are compared, too. Provide decision supports to container allocation strategy and plane arrangement in the center terminal yard.