Block Sizing at the Container Terminals with Irregular Configuration

Abstract

This study addresses the container block sizing problem at container terminals with irregular configuration. New marine container terminals often have a rectangular configuration by making use of reclaimed land. However due to geographical reasons some terminals have an irregular configuration. At the irregular configuration terminal that Rubber Tyred Gantry crane (RTG) operated, the yard capacity for container stored depends on the aisle locations and number of aisles that yard trailers move. In this paper, we consider container block sizing problem as aisle arrangement problem at the arbitrary configuration, in order to maximize the storage capacity and minimize the standard deviation of travel distances by quay side location. From the computational results, we can find a part of solutions that proposed approach outperforms the existing one.