A Simulation Model for Automated Container Terminals

In order to accommodate the growing intercontinental container transport, port facilities have to be up-scaled drastically. The challenge is to develop facilities that can handle a new generation of ships, the jumbo container vessels, with a capacity of 8,000 TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) or more. The total in-port time to serve these jumbos is set at 24 hours. This amounts to almost double the loading/unloading flows that can be achieved at present. These flows cannot be met by the present quay transport. In this study the modeling of a quay transport system which is carried out by automated guided vehicles (AGVs) is described. The model is applied to the current Delta Sealand container terminal (DSL) of ECT Rotterdam to obtain some degree of reference. The developed model is used for extensive validation experiments and experiments to determine the sensitivity concerning a number of parameters like number of AGVs, maximum AGV speed, crane capacity and stack capacity. It can be concluded that the performance of the simulated model matches the performance of the actual terminal. Therefore, the model is suited for future research.