A Tool for Container Terminal Design

Abstract

Due to the increase of global containerized trade and container vessel sizes, the necessity of container terminal development is unavoidable. On the other hand, designing a container terminal is a very complex process, and on a concept design phase, a quick assessment for the design alternatives should be done in a limited time, cost, and effort. Therefore, an automated tool is developed by (Koster, 2019) to ease and accelerate the work of the engineers. However, further development is required for the automated tool, especially for the layout generation tool to also consider area limitations.

This research aims to answer the research question: ‘How can a container terminal be designed in the concept design phase while taking into account area limitations?’. The premise is answered by developing an automated tool (i.e. design tool) for container terminal design that consider not only terminal throughput and design rules for the main input but also terminal shape and dimensions. The algorithms implemented within the design tool will correspond for at least four tasks: recognizing the terminal shape and dimension as the boundary condition, modifying container block configuration (either by enlarging/reducing its size), generating the container blocks, and determining the desired output. After the design tool is developed, it will be validated using case studies from existing terminals by comparing several validation parameters: terminal layout, terminal capacity, the number of blocks, blocks configuration, stacking density and stacking orientation. Other than that, the design tool is also reviewed by using three types of applicability: design alternatives for all types of equipment, element calculation & cost estimation from all design alternatives, and changing throughput demand.

In this thesis, we can find the development and validation of the design tool that will give us the answer to the main deliverables of a concept design phase. The design tool is capable of presenting container terminal design alternatives and comparing the layout, elements, land use, cost, and capacity for 4 main types of stacking equipment: RTG, RMG, SC, and RS. This would be very beneficial for container terminal stakeholders, not only for determining which one is the most effective and efficient stacking equipment (which depends on the main objective of the terminal; e.g., lower land use, higher throughput, least labour cost, more sustainable, etc.), but also for getting information of main deliverables at the concept design phase: land use and cost. Other than that, this thesis will also show the design tool’s capability of generating different container terminal design for varying throughput demand and providing information on whether the container terminal has reached its area capacity or not. All of these are resulted from the process of an automated tool, making the design process faster and better, which will be very meaningful in this era of continuous uncertainty.

All in all, area limitations have a significant influence in the container terminal design process since it is closely related to container block configuration, which also related to the terminal capacity, land use, and costs. Area limitations will also make the design process even more complicated; and thus, the design tool that has been developed in this thesis for generating container terminal design alternatives is one of the answers in solving the problem.