Maintenance Stations Research Articles

Life-Support Model of Supply Systems of Oil and Gas Industry Objects

At present, repair and diagnostic complexes are being developed for repair of oil and gas production facilities, including control areas for working capacity, diagnosing components used in maintenance stations, as well as areas equipped with the necessary technological equipment, measuring instruments, tools and equipment for carrying out current repair of replacement elements. For maintenance of repair, repair-diagnostic complexes are equipped with means of power supply, sets of spare property and accessories and operational documentation. Repair-diagnostic complexes can be represented using a three-phase multi-channel queuing system. The study of such a system with the distribution functions of the service time of applications different from the exponential makes it difficult to use analytical models. The developed simulation model of the repair and diagnostic complex allows to evaluate the characteristics of its functioning, the most important of which is the average service time of the application in the system, as well as to determine the required number of channels on each site. The developed model can be aggregated into a general model of research into the operation of complex technical systems for supplying oilfield facilities.

Method of Optimizing Placement of Mobile Car Service Stations in Sparsely Populated Areas

Abstract The article considers the development of a method of optimizing placement of mobile car maintenance stations (MMSs) in sparsely populated areas. The method includes the analysis of the territorial location of settlements, number of vehicles in those settlements, calculation of the MCSS travel time between settlements, determination of the optimum base site for MMS by a series of criteria.

Mobile Fleet Economic Efficiency Calculation in International Road Transport

Activity efficiency of economic entity in transport business considerably depends on appropriate mobile fleet choice. As a rule, reliable, having low exploitation costs and well-designed maintenance stations extensive network, trucks secure sound financial position for transport enterprises which carry out efficient organization of freight forwarding business. Mobile fleet purchase conditions are much worse than in European counties: leasing and credit rates are 3 – 4 times lower, and price itself is lower too. Our government decree which foresees disposal fee implementation makes the situation even worse. It’s a serious issue and it should be solved, for under conditions of freight rates decrease, mobile fleet upgrading expenditures become more significant. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s4p59

해군 함정 정비체계 최적 정비인력 할당 모형 연구

Naval maintenance system carries out repairs of battle ships. Korean Navy has four maintenance stations to maximize the readiness of the battle ships. Since each station can provide different services according to characteristics(specific size of ships, type of maintenances) and the maintenance ability of stations is predetermined, it has been one of complex problems for the Korean Navy to find the optimal resource allocation. We investigate the operation of the stations from the perspective of the human resource allocation which plays crucial role in the performance of the maintenance stations. Using a queueing model and optimization technique, we present a way to derive the optimal personnel allocation which minimize the waiting number of battle ships at each station, leading to the improvement of the military readiness in the Korean Navy.

THE SITUATION IN AGRICULTURE OF THE REPUBLIC OF TATARSTAN BY THE EXAMPLE OF THE MORTOVSKY AREA OF THE COLLECTIVE FARM “SOCIALIZM”, STARO-YURASHKINSKY RURAL SETTLEMENT IN 1950 AND AZNAKAEVO AREA IN 1958

The article highlights the situation in agriculture in the pe-riod of 1950 -1958. The article tells about the difficulties in preparations for the sowing season in Mortovsky area of the collective farm «Socialism», the upward distortions in Aznakaevo area, about the impossibility to make repairs in Staro-Yrashkinsky rural settlement, the collective farms «Stalin» and «Svetly Put» because of the unrepaired forge, about reorganization of machine-and- tractor stations into the repair-tractor stations (technical maintenance stations).

Recoverable robust single day aircraft maintenance routing problem

Aircraft maintenance planning is of critical importance to the safe and efficient operations of an airline. It is common to solve the aircraft routing and maintenance planning problems many months in advance, with the solution spanning multiple days. An unfortunate consequence of this approach is the possible infeasibility of the maintenance plan due to frequent perturbations occurring in operations. There is an emerging concept that focuses on the generation of aircraft routes for a single day to ensure maintenance coverage that night, alleviating the effects of schedule perturbations from preceding days. In this paper, we present a novel approach to ensure that a sufficient number of aircraft routes are provided each day so maintenance critical aircraft receive maintenance that night. By penalising the under supply of routes terminating at maintenance stations from each overnight airport, we construct a single day routing to provide the best possible maintenance plan. This single day aircraft maintenance routing problem (SDAMRP) is further protected from disruptions by applying the recoverable robustness framework. To efficiently solve the recoverable robust SDAMRP acceleration techniques, such as identifying Pareto-optimal cuts and a trust region approach, have been applied. The SDAMRP is evaluated against a set of flight schedules and the results demonstrate a significantly improved aircraft maintenance plan. Further, the results demonstrate the magnitude of recoverability improvement that is achieved by employing recoverable robustness to the SDAMRP.

Development and demonstration of fuel cell vehicles and supporting infrastructure in China

The demand for urban transportation in China, including cars, motorbikes, buses, and trains, is growing substantially. China’s transportation fleet is projected to expand from 16 to 94 million vehicles between 2000 and 2020, with liquid and electricity transport fuel demand growing from about 5 Quadrillion British Thermal Units (Quads) to over 20 Quads in 2035. In response to energy security, economic growth and environmental protection needs, Chinese government agencies, academia and the private sector have organized their programs and investments to advance development and demonstration of sustainable alternative transportation systems. This analysis surveys historic development of fuel cell vehicle (FCV) including fuel cell buses (FCB) technology in China, summarizes recent efforts to scale-up FCV development and associated infrastructure in major Chinese cities, and briefly addresses future directions in Chinese fuel cell and hydrogen energy technology development. Since the late 1990’s, Chinese universities, government institutions and the private sector have implemented research, development, demonstration and deployment programs for electric (EV), fuel cell (FCV), and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). These efforts have advanced the feasibility of FCVs to be a part of sustainable urban transportation system, including technical performance, infrastructure, and customer acceptance. Three generations of FCVs, START I, START II and START III have been developed, demonstrated and deployed. Similarly, several generations of FCBs have been developed and demonstrated. Collectively, these efforts have demonstrated and deployed over 1,000 FCBs and FCVs in several Chinese cities. Large-scale, intensive-use FCV and FCB demonstration trials, including those during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Exposition (EXPO), have been successfully built and operated. Infrastructure, such as hydrogen production facilities, fuelling stations, and maintenance stations have been constructed and operated to support the fleets of FCBs and FCVs. Experiences learned from these FCV research, development, and demonstration activities are the foundation for scaling up infrastructure and fleet trials in a growing number of cities in eastern and western China. An aggressive research and development vision and 2020 technology performance targets provide a foundation for the next generation of EVs, FCVs and HEVs, and, options for China’s efforts to develop a portfolio of sustainable transportation systems.

Industrial Ink Jet Printing Solutions for Photovoltaic and Printed Electronic Applications

PiXDRO is a wholly owned Subsidiary of Roth & Rau AG of Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Germany and has complete equipment design, assembly and application facilities in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Our core focus is in the design, construction and delivery of industrial inkjet application development systems and the manufacturing of advanced high volume industrial inkjet systems. PiXDRO's experience in the inkjet printing market has resulted in various innovative technologies and products such as LP50, IP410, and IP3000. Our products include PiXDRO designed printing modules (mechanical systems, drop view, maintenance stations, optical alignment systems, and system operating software) which are embedded in an open system architecture allowing PiXDRO to customize our products/ systems for client specific processes and applications. These building blocks enable easy integration and migration from entry-level single layer muti nozzle printing for R&D purposes to high volume printing in an industrial system. With these products and modules PiXDRO facilitates the development of applications and offers a migration path to a complete industrial high volume production systems. Currently PiXDRO Ink Jet printing Systems are used in the Printed Electronics, Photovoltaic's, Medical Diagnostics, Security and related material development market segments.As part of Roth & Rau AG, PiXDRO offers complete printing solutions including pre & post processing and automation solutions; thereby, providing a complete solution for our customers requirements.

Full Scale Evaluation of Upflow™ Filter – A Catch Basin Insert for the Treatment of Stormwater at Critical Source Areas

Stormwater runoff from critical source areas, such as pa rking lots, vehicle fueling and maintenance stations, and public works storage areas, may contain pollutant loadings of hydrocarbons, toxic trace metals, nutrients, pathogens, and/ or other toxicants and pollutants that are greater than the loadings of “normal” storm water runoff (Bannerman, et al . 1993; Pitt, et al . 1995; Claytor and Schueler 1996). One alternative to end-of - pipe treatment for stormwater runoff is to treat the more contaminated run off from problem sources before this runoff mixes with the runoff from other areas (Bannerma n, et al . 1993; Pitt, et al . 1995; Claytor and Schueler 1996). Critical source area treatment devices need to incorporate a variety of treatment processes that can be targeted fo r different classes of pollutants of concern and to respond to the variability of stormwater quality conditions that can originate from different types of critical source areas (Pitt, et al. 1999). This paper will describe one such device, the UpFlo TM Filter that has undergone development and testing under the EPA’s SBIR and ETV programs.

The Four-Day Aircraft Maintenance Routing Problem

Federal aviation regulations require that all aircraft undergo maintenance after flying a certain number of hours. Most major U.S. airlines observe the maintenance regulations by requiring that aircraft spend a night at a maintenance station after at most three or four days of flying. In addition, some airlines require that every aircraft goes through a special maintenance station for what is commonly called a balance check. Airlines usually schedule routine maintenance only at night so as not to cut into aircraft utilization. The maintenance routing problem is to find a routing of the aircraft that satisfies the short-term routine maintenance requirements. In Gopalan, R. and Talluri, K. T. (“The Aircraft Maintenance Routing Problem,” Opns. Res. in press) we modeled this problem as one of generating an appropriate directed graph (called a line-of-flight-graph), and of finding a special Euler Tour called the k-day Maintenance Euler Tour (k-MET, for k = 3, 4, …) in that directed graph—for finding a maintenance routing in which the aircraft would spend at most k days of flying before overnighting at a maintenance station and have an opportunity for a balance-check. In the same paper we gave a polynomial-time algorithm for finding a 3-MET, if one exists, in the directed graph. In this paper we consider the routing problem when the requirement is to overnight at a maintenance station after at most four days of flying and to undergo the balance check every n days, where n is the number of planes in the fleet of the equipment type under consideration. We show that this problem is NP-complete; in fact, that the k-MET problem is NP-complete for all k ≥ 4. When the number of maintenance stations is exactly one, we show that the 4-MET problem can be solved by solving an appropriate bipartite matching problem; and hence in polynomial time. As a corollary to this result, we show that when there is no balance check station visit requirement, the four-day routing problem, in a given LOF-graph, can be solved (without any restrictions on the number of maintenance stations) in polynomial time. We show how our polynomial-time algorithms for the 3-MET problem and the restricted 4-MET problem can be used to design effective heuristics for the 4-MET problem.

Flight Scheduling and Maintenance Base Planning

In an effort to control costs, airlines have begun to concentrate on their maintenance operations as a potential source for savings. Nevertheless, federal regulations and internal safety policies effectively limit cost savings to improvements in productivity and scheduling. The purpose of this paper is to present a model that can be used by planners to both locate maintenance stations and to develop flight schedules that better meet the cyclical demand for maintenance. The problem is formulated as a min-cost, multicommodity flow network with integral constraints, and solved using a two-phase heuristic. The procedure is demonstrated with data supplied by American Airlines for their Boeing 727 fleet. The results show a significant improvement over current techniques, and indicate that substantial cost reductions can be achieved by eliminating up to 5 of the 22 maintenance bases now in operation. Similar results were obtained for American's Super 80 and DC-10 fleets. Perturbation analysis confirms the robustness of these findings, and suggests that loss in flexibility due to interruptions in the flight schedule will be negligible.