Analysis of Cargo Stability in Container Transportation
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Analysis of cargo stability in container transportation Ant´onioJos´eGalr~aoRamos Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Supervisor Professor Jos´eFernando da Costa Oliveira Co-supervisors Professor Jos´eFernando Gon¸calves Professor Manuel Joaquim Pereira Lopes Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering and Management. Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto 2015 This research was partially supported by the ERDF through the COMPETE Programme, by the Portuguese Government through the FCT (StableCargo - PTDC/SEN-TRA/121715/ 2010 and PTDC/EGE-GES/117692/2010) and by the Project BEST CASE - SAESCTN- PIIC&DT/1/2011, which is co-financed by the North Portugal Regional Operational Pro- gramme (ON.2 - O Novo Norte), under the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot Matthew 25:14-30 To Vanessa, the love of my life, Sim~aoand Teresa. For your unconditional love. Acknowledgements This thesis was a long and challenging endeavour that would not have been possible without the academic and personal support of a number of people, to whom I am very grateful. I would like to start by thanking Professor Jos´eFernando Oliveira, who generously accepted to be my supervisor, and welcomed me into his research family when I arrived at a crossroads in life. He provided the idea and funding for this research and guided my development as a researcher. Sometimes we just have the good fortune of coming across remarkable people. To him I am forever grateful. To Professor Jos´eFernando Gon¸calves who accepted to co-supervise this work, for his helpful and dedicated supervision throughout the project. His advice and incentive along the way have been an invaluable contribution to this thesis. To Professor Pereira Lopes, co-supervisor, colleague and friend that encouraged and helped me find the right path in my academic career. To Professor Miguel Gomes, for the brainstorming sessions, patience and companion- ship. Along with my supervisors', his advice has been of tremendous benefit to the work presented in this thesis. To Jo~aoPinho for the support and help with my graphic work. To L´uciaFlores, for all the support with the English language. To Elsa Silva and Pedro Rocha, for their companionship throughout this journey. To Professor Francisco Parre~no who kindly provided his CLP solutions to be used as test instances. Special thanks go to the co-authors who have contributed directly to the written parts of this thesis. In addition, I express my gratitude to the Funda¸c~aopara a Ci^enciae Tecnologia and the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto for partially supporting this research. Finally, to my family, to whom I express my deepest and sincerest love. To my mother and father, who always encouraged and actively supported me all my life, to find and realize my potential. To my in-laws and my sister-in-law for always providing the much needed backup. To my children, Sim~aoand Teresa, that came into my life during this period. You suffered my absence through the long working hours and travels, but were a fundamental source of motivation and unconditional love. I love both of you - your smiles, your laughs and your powerful hugs. And also, last but never least, to my loving wife Vanessa, who endured the most hardship from this project with me and enjoyed very few of the joys and excitements in return. You have been my bedrock, providing the stable background that made all of this possible with your love, strength and determination. Being found by you still is my greatest achievement. Abstract The main focus of this thesis is to address cargo stability within the container loading problem (CLP). In the last years the transport industry has been facing increasing chal- lenges. Whether as a result of new regulations or of the increasing service levels demanded by customers, the pressure for high levels of performance from transportation companies will continue in the short, as well as in the long term. This combination between compliance and service level challenges, has a strong im- plication in the way cargo transportation will be addressed in the future. The need to maximize the usage of space within the different transport modes without deterioration of the cargo is one of the main problems that highlights the effect of these challenges. Given the complexity of the problem, the need for cargo planning tools that can be effectively used in practice, is expected to increase. The amount of research that has addressed the problem of optimization of the spatial arrangement of cargo inside trucks or containers has grown in the last decade. The problem, known in the literature as the CLP, belongs to the more generic combinatorial optimization class of Cutting and Packing problems. Although several approaches to this problem have been proposed, their wide adoption by transportation companies did not occur. This mainly results from the fact that the basic formulation of the problem does not address the requirements of the real-world problem, that is, it does not address a set of practical constraints that influence the way cargo is arranged inside the container. One of the most important practical constraints is cargo stability, and even though it has been addressed in the literature, it has been done in an over-simplified way that does not actually translate real-world stability. The proposed work aims to develop new algorithms for the CLP, based on heuristics and metaheuristics that will contribute to close the gap between research and the industry practice. Particular attention was given to cargo stability, which will be studied, modelled and integrated with the optimization of cargo spatial arrangement. The first part of this thesis contains a comprehensive introduction to the CLP and cargo stability. This includes CLP typologies, modelling approaches, heuristic solution methods and practical constraints. An extensive analysis of cargo stability within the CLP is also presented. The second part of this thesis reflects the defined approach to cargo stability, that is, that cargo stability should be addressed by separating static and dynamic stability. It first proposes an algorithm for evaluating static stability based on the static mechanical i ii Abstract equilibrium conditions applied to rigid bodies and a physical packing sequence algorithm that, given a container loading arrangement, generates the actual sequence by which each box is placed inside the container, considering static stability and loading operations effi- ciency. Secondly, it proposes for the CLP, a multi-population biased random-key genetic algorithm that combines a genetic algorithm and a constructive heuristic algorithm. The constructive heuristic uses the proposed static stability approach to evaluate stability dur- ing the filling of the container and the proposed physical packing sequence algorithm to evaluate the feasibility of loading arrangements. Thirdly, to explore dynamic stability, a physics simulation tool is presented and its main physical parameters validated. The tool was developed to simulate the external forces to which the container is exposed during transportation. It is followed by the development of a set of dynamic stability evaluation metrics to be used within CLP algorithms. Aside from a comprehensive introduction to CLP and cargo stability, the main contri- butions of this thesis are the proposed static stability approach, the CLP algorithm, the physics simulation tool and a set of dynamic stability metrics. Keywords: container loading problem, stability, physics engine Resumo O principal foco desta tese ´ea estabilidade de carga no ^ambito do problema de empa- cotamento em contentores (PEC). Nos ´ultimosanos, o sector dos transportes tem vindo a enfrentar desafios cada vez maiores. A press~aosobre as transportadoras para atingir elevados n´ıveis de performance, resultado de novos regulamentos ou dos n´ıveis de servi¸co exigidos pelos consumidores, continuar´a,a curto e a longo prazo, a aumentar. Esta combina¸c~aoentre cumprimento dos regulamentos e resposta aos desafios ao n´ıvel da qualidade de servi¸co,est´aintimamente relacionada com a evolu¸c~aodo transporte de carga. A necessidade de maximizar o espa¸co ´utilem diferentes meios de transporte, garantindo a integridade da carga, ´euma das principais quest~oesenfrentadas. A investiga¸c~aorealizada na ´areada optimiza¸c~ao espacial de carga em cami~oesou con- tentores aumentou significativamente na ´ultimad´ecada.O problema, referido na literatura como o PEC, pertence a um conjunto de problemas de optimiza¸c~aocombinat´oria:os Prob- lemas de Cortes e Empacotamentos. Apesar de j´aterem sido propostas v´arias abordagens ao problema, nunca houve uma adop¸c~aogeneralizada por parte das empresas transportadoras, principalmente, porque a formula¸c~aobase do problema n~aocontempla os requisitos reais, ou seja, n~aotem em consid- era¸c~aoum conjunto de restri¸c~oespr´aticasque influenciam a forma como a carga ´edisposta no interior de um contentor. Uma das restri¸c~oesmais importantes ´ea estabilidade da carga, que na literatura, tem sido sempre estudada numa ´opticasimplista, que n~aotraduz a realidade. O trabalho proposto pretende desenvolver novos algoritmos para o PEC, baseados em heur´ısticase meta-heur´ısticas,contribuindo para aproximar a investiga¸c~aoe a pr´aticana ind´ustria.Deu-se particular aten¸c~ao`aestabilidade da carga, que ser´aestudada, modelada e integrada com a optimiza¸c~aodo arranjo espacial da carga. A primeira parte desta tese cont´emuma introdu¸c~aoabrangente ao PEC e `aestabilidade da carga, incluindo tipologia do PEC, modelos abordados, m´etodos heur´ısticose restri¸c~oes pr´aticas. E´ apresentada uma an´aliseextensiva da estabilidade da carga, no ^ambito do PEC. A segunda parte desta tese reflecte a op¸c~aode abordagem `aestabilidade da carga, ou seja, que a estabilidade da carga dever´aser analisada separando a estabilidade est´aticada estabilidade din^amica.