Study on ship lock arrangement model based on multi-objective decision

Abstract

The Yangtze River is the busiest river in the world. It plays a vital role in coastal economic development. With the increasingly busy transportation of the Yangtze River in recent years, the freight volume of the Three Gorges lock increases gradually. A large number of ships queue up at the upstream and downstream of the Three Gorges to pass the lock. It increase transport costs and security risks. The average waiting time for ships was about 150 hours in 2018. The layout of ships passing through the Three Gorges ship lock needs to be further optimized. In this paper, the ship lock arrangement model based on multi-objective decision is constructed to further improve the transportation efficiency of related lock ships. We hope to further alleviate the Three Gorges ship congestion problem. After expert consultation, this paper selects two objectives : the best economic benefit of lock and the maximum weight of ship. In other words, the model further balances the maximum area utilization and the maximum ship weight. By adding constraints and data processing, the model can be applied to solve practical problems. This model presented in this paper can be applied to the optimal scheduling of ships passing through the Three Gorges Ship lock and other ship locks. Finally, this paper illustrates the feasibility of the model through a case study. The best one was selected from the five arrangements of six ships. The case study shows that the model can optimize ship layout.