Material Handling Vehicles Research Articles

A design framework for shuttle-based automated storage systems

Shuttle-based automated storage systems are blooming in modern companies as well as research interest in these systems due to their high storage density, flexibility, and short cycle time. This study aims to introduce a novel design framework exploring different layout configurations affecting system performance under three main dimensions: racks, material handling vehicles, and buffer areas. This taxonomy supports the definition of a standard notation and increases the awareness of future industrial and academic research regarding variant design configurations. A review of the literature reveals the state-of-art and existing gaps.

Research and Innovation Activities on PEM Fuel Cells and Electrolysers Supported by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership

The Clean Hydrogen Partnership — the successor of the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU) — aims to contribute to EU Green Deal and Hydrogen Strategy by providing financial support for research and innovation activities in the field of advanced clean hydrogen technologies. It builds on 15 years of strategic cooperation between public and private sectors enabling several innovative technologies to advance from the experimental scale closer to maturity.The projects funded under the previous FCH JU programmes and the first Call for Proposals 2022 of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership have significantly advanced both the proton-exchange membrane-based fuel cell (PEMFC) and electrolyser (PEMEL) technologies. So far, about 660 million EUR were allocated to support 122 projects addressing different aspects of PEMFC and PEMEL technologies. A large share of this funding, around 585 mil EUR supporting 102 projects, was dedicated to large scale demonstrations of PEMFC in transport and stationary applications. Largely thanks to this support, the EU reached a competitive position to provide PEMFC and PEMEL technologies with a well-established supply chain from processing the raw materials into specialised materials (e.g. electro-catalysts), production of components and sub-systems.Significant advancements have been made in the development, validation and demonstration of PEM fuel cell technologies for material handling vehicles, buses and passenger cars as well as stationary applications. Future research and demonstration projects on PEM fuel cells are needed in transport sector such as heavy-duty vehicles, industrial vehicles, shipping and aviation.The R&I projects on PEM electrolysers have contributed to making hydrogen production more competitive and enabled the scale-up of these technologies alongside improvements in efficiency and cost reduction. Significant progress has been made on PEMEL for example: (i) achieving a rapid response time (in the order of a few seconds) needed in grid balancing, (ii) upscale the PEM electrolysers to a multi-MW level and (iii) providing reliable green hydrogen production solutions to decarbonise industrial processes.This paper will cover the status and main results of R&I activities in PEM fuel cells and electrolysers supported by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, including an overview of the European competitiveness in this sector.

A study on the applications of vibratory motor for material handling vehicles

This work aims at improving the efficiency and safety of the tipper trucks while in action. This project focused on performing a detailed analysis of the performance, safety, and cost aspects of the present techniques of achieving that. The pros and cons of incorporating a vibrator for the tipper truck are studied. This involved extensive FEA analysis in the preliminary stage. The structural, vibrational, and fatigue analysis is done for the critical components which helped in deciding the feasibility of incorporating such a mechanism. The critical components for the analysis are the base of the truck body, trunnion, brackets for mounting the telescopic cylinder, and the vibratory motor. The CAD models are prepared according to the industry standards and analyses are performed. Random data for forced vibration is generated, which is used to perform analyses on the components in FEA. Experimentation on a scaled-down model is also conducted to get the real-time data for the system. A vibration sensor would be incorporated using Arduino, and the acceleration data of vibration are recorded and compared by the theoretical values. A comparative study for the stability analysis is done, with and without the vibrator. A detailed report for the change in stroke length, pump pressure/flow requirement, etc. is formed and compared. The improvement in efficiency of dumping, time-saving and various other parameters is also considered. The cost aspect of rolling this system in the market is also studied.

Future Hydrogen Markets for Transportation and Industry: The Impact of CO2 Taxes

The technological lock-in of the transportation and industrial sector can be largely attributed to the limited availability of alternative fuel infrastructures. Herein, a countrywide supply chain analysis of Germany, spanning until 2050, is applied to investigate promising infrastructure development pathways and associated hydrogen distribution costs for each analyzed hydrogen market. Analyzed supply chain pathways include seasonal storage to balance fluctuating renewable power generation with necessary purification, as well as trailer- and pipeline-based hydrogen delivery. The analysis encompasses green hydrogen feedstock in the chemical industry and fuel cell-based mobility applications, such as local buses, non-electrified regional trains, material handling vehicles, and trucks, as well as passenger cars. Our results indicate that the utilization of low-cost, long-term storage and improved refueling station utilization have the highest impact during the market introduction phase. We find that public transport and captive fleets offer a cost-efficient countrywide renewable hydrogen supply roll-out option. Furthermore, we show that, at comparable effective carbon tax resulting from the current energy tax rates in Germany, hydrogen is cost-competitive in the transportation sector by the year 2025. Moreover, we show that sector-specific CO2 taxes are required to provide a cost-competitive green hydrogen supply in both the transportation and industrial sectors.

Methodical foundations of cargo owners’ transport services logistics management

In the article methodical foundations of transport services logistics management of cargo owners were realized, on the basis of integrated estimation of economic efficiency of holistic progressive logistic chain operation of cargo delivery. In the making of the study, the authors have identified the provision of logistic management conditions by production and mainline rail transport in carrying out transportations. In the successful implementation of finished product loading and arriving cargo processing plans, clear interaction of all logistics chain elements is an important factor, achieved on the basis of introduction of a stable cargo train schedule at sections and the submission of local operation organization in nodes, at sections and stations. On the basis of modelling possible variants of different parameters ratios of the logistic interaction process of production with mainline rail transport, it was determined that at different parameters ratios results can be obtained that will vary by waiting time of carrying out loading in railway cars and waiting time of removal of finished products from manufacturer’s warehouse, required car fleet and loading of material handling vehicles. In this case, the most economical option should be taken as the main condition for ensuring a rational interaction of industrial and mainline rail transport.

An Alternative IPT Pickup Controller for Material Handling Using a Current Doubler

Inductive power transfer systems deployed in material handling have traditionally used parallel-tuned (current-sourced) boost regulators to independently control and regulate the load on each secondary. This paper evaluates the current doubler as an alternative parallel-tuned secondary controller within this application to better match the current and voltage requirements in the secondary resonant tuning network in high-power applications. This enables designs that enable the secondary magnetic pickup to achieve a smaller profile and fit within typical space constraints of material-handling vehicles. This paper presents the design approach needed for this regulator and compares its operation and performance against a traditional boost controller using both the simulation and the measurement of two built 5-kW secondary regulators. The current doubler naturally achieves a lower output ripple due to its interleaved switching and is found to have a comparable efficiency to the boost controller but requires slightly more components.

Electrocatalyst for Direct Alcohol Fuel Cells

Direct alcohol fuel cells (DAFC) offer a number of advantages compared to other fuel cell solutions or batteries. So the liquid fuel allows for easy handling and high energy storage densities. At the same time, the system design can be kept simple and thus offers a certain robustness. Direct methanol fuel cells converting (DMFC) using low temperature proton exchange membrane technology have achieved a high level of maturity and have already entered some special markets like battery chargers for portable applications and recreational vehicles, back-up power systems or material handling vehicles. Two facts are currently hindering a wider use DMFC, high costs due to the high usage of platinum based catalysts and the reluctance of many potential users to employ methanol as fuel. In this contribution catalyst developments with respect to two different concepts to address these issues will be presented. The first is the use of alkaline anion exchange membrane fuel cells in order to avoid or reduce the use of platinum. The second concept is the use of ethanol as alternative non-toxic fuel with even higher energy density. Because of the less corrosive effect of the alkaline environment less noble metals can be used as catalysts. In particular palladium has shown high activity for the oxidation of alcohols under these conditions [1]. In order to further enhance both, the activity of the catalysts and the CO2 current efficiencies Pd binary [2] and ternary alloys were investigated. As will be shown, the addition of nickel or silver as second metal is able to enhance the catalytic activity of palladium for the methanol as well as the ethylene glycol oxidation reaction. Thereby, the addition of silver also enhances the CCE of the methanol oxidation reaction, whereas the addition of nickel enhances the CCE of the ethylene glycol oxidation reaction. In both cases the addition of tin or ruthenium as third element to form ternary catalysts causes a further significant increase of the performance; so the combination of palladium and nickel with either tin or ruthenium leads to high CCEs and high faradic currents for the ethylene glycol oxidation at significantly lower potentials. Fig. 1: CCE of the methanol oxidation at PdxM/C catalysts (upper) and the ethylene glycol oxidation at PdxMyNiy/C catalysts (lower). As has been reported, the alkaline environment is not suitable to enhance the complete oxidation of ethanol. In contrary, the high availability of OH fosters the formation of acetic acid or acetate which are dead end products. In order to enhance the catalytic activity of platinum based catalysts in an acidic environment the addition of tin is known to be useful [3]. However, no positive effect with respect to the complete oxidation of ethanol has been reported so far. On the other hand side positive results on the addition of rhodium on the CCE of the ethanol oxidation have been reported by different groups [4, 5]. In this contribution results of a study of the effect of rhodium and/or tin addition to platinum electrodes on the ethanol oxidation in acidic environment at ambient temperature will be reported. It will be shown that the addition of either metal causes an enhancement of the catalytic activity. Furthermore it will be shown that the addition of rhodium is able to increase the CCE of the ethanol oxidation even at ambient temperature. Using a recently developed set-up for DEMS like measurements under HT-PEMFC relevant conditions [6], the ethanol oxidation at Pt/C and PtRh/C catalysts was also studied in the vapour phase at 150 °C. It will be shown that CCE under these conditions is much higher exceeding 65% for both catalysts. The particular effect of the addition of rhodium under these conditions was found to be that it mitigates the self-poisoning of the catalysts by ethanol which allows for achieving high CCEs also for technical relevant ethanol concentration of 5 mol l-1. [1] D. Bayer, C. Cremers, H. Baltruschat, J. Tubke, ECS Transactions, 41 (2011) 1669-1680. [2] T. Jurzinsky, C. Cremers, K. Pinkwart, J. Tübke, ECS Transactions, 58 (2013) 633-636. [3] C. Lamy, S. Rousseau, E.M. Belgsir, C. Coutanceau, J.M. Leger, Proc. 54th Annual ISE Meeting, Sao Pedro, BRAZIL, Sep 01-05, 2003. [4] F.H.B. Lima, E.R. Gonzalez, Electrochimica Acta, 53 (2008) 2963-2971. [5] A. Kowal, M. Li, M. Shao, K. Sasaki, M.B. Vukmirovic, J. Zhang, N.S. Marinkovic, P. Liu, A.I. Frenkel, R.R. Adzic, Nature Materials, 8 (2009) 325-330. [6] C. Niether, M.S. Rau, C. Cremers, D.J. Jones, K. Pinkwart, J. Tübke, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, 747 (2015) 97-103. Figure 1

Analysis of Polyurethane Filled Solid Tire

In this project we study and analyze polyurethane filled solid tire for industrial purpose. The tire plays a significant role in the performance of a vehicle. We studied about the solid tire developed recently for the material handling vehicle. With better specifications and removing all the drawbacks of the solid tires we developed polyurethane filled solid tire. The various data used for developing the tire design are mentioned by the industry as per their requirements. The various methods of fabrication and performance testing are included in this project. It also deals with situation were the tire failure occurs and is designed taking into consideration of those factors. The design is carefully made meeting the demands of the application.

Results of a 20 000 h lifetime test of a 7 kW direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) hybrid system – degradation of the DMFC stack and the energy storage

First-ever lifetime test of a DMFC system lasting 25 600 h with a dynamic load profile of a material handling vehicle.

Onboard battery charging with Oorja's DMFC for material handling vehicles

Oorja Protonics has developed a direct methanol fuel cell system for onboard battery charging of material handling vehicles, which offers reduced operating costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The return-on-investment is rapid, and the environmental benefits are immediate. Several Fortune 500 companies are now using OorjaPac to gain a competitive advantage in their material handling operations.

Integrated production and material handling scheduling using mathematical programming and constraint programming

In this article, we propose an integrated formulation of the combined production and material handling scheduling problems. Traditionally, scheduling problems consider the production machines as the only constraining resource. This is however no longer true as material handling vehicles are becoming more and more valuable resources requiring important investments. Their operations should be optimized and above all synchronized with machine operations. In the problem addressed in this paper, a job shop context is considered. Machines and vehicles are both considered as constraining resources. The integrated scheduling problem is formulated as a mathematical programming model and as a constraint programming model which are compared for optimally solving a series of test problems. A commercial software (ILOG OPLStudio) was used for modeling and testing both models.

Integrating data envelopment analysis and analytic hierarchy for the facility layout design in manufacturing systems

Facility layout design (FLD) has a very important effect on the performance of a manufacturing system. The concept of FLD is usually considered as a multiobjective problem. For this reason, a layout generation and its evaluation are often challenging and time consuming due to their inherent multiple objectives in nature and their data collection process. In addition, an effective facility layout evaluation procedure necessitates the consideration of qualitative criteria, e.g., flexibility in volume and variety and quality related to the product and production, as well as quantitative criteria such as material handling cost, adjacency score, shape ratio, and material handling vehicle utilization in the decision process. This paper presents a decision-making methodology based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), which uses both quantitative and qualitative criteria, for evaluating FLD. The criteria that are to be minimized are viewed as inputs whereas the criteria to be maximized are considered as outputs. A computer-aided layout-planning tool, VisFactory, is adopted to facilitate the layout alternative design process as well as to collect quantitative data by using exact and vague data by means of fuzzy set theory. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is then applied to collect qualitative data related to quality and flexibility. The DEA methodology is used to solve the layout design problem by simultaneously considering both the quantitative and qualitative data. The purposed integrated procedure is applied to a real data set of a case study, which consists of 19 FLDs provided of the plastic profile production system.

Scheduling material handling vehicles in a container terminal

Increasing global trade has created the need for efficient container ports. The goal of the port is to move containers as quickly as possible and at the least possible cost. Goods that are delayed at the port are inevitably tardy when delivered to the customer, and thus sanctioned by late charges. Two key activities in the port are (i) unloading of containers from truck and then storage in the export area, and (ii) removal of containers from import storage and then loading onto the trucks. Since containers are large and heavy, specialized material handling vehicles are required for transporting them within the terminal. The focus of this paper is on port terminals where straddle carriers are primarily used to move containers. Container terminals typically have well developed computer and communication networks. Through these networks a terminal scheduler will control and schedule the movement of the straddle carrier fleet in real time. The objective of the terminal scheduler is to minimize the empty travel of straddle carriers, while at the same time minimizing any delays in servicing customers. This paper presents a straddle scheduling procedure that can be used by a terminal scheduler to control the movement of straddle carriers. At its core, the procedure is driven by an assignment algorithm that dynamically matches straddle carriers and trucks, as each becomes available. The procedures were developed and tested in collaboration with the largest container terminal operator in the Port of New York and New Jersey. Using a simulation model of the real system, the superiority of the proposed procedure over two alternative scheduling strategies is illustrated.

Analysis of landmark configuration for absolute positioning of autonomous vehicles

Abstract Landmark navigation is a common positioning method for material handling vehicles operating in industrial environments. The position is calculated based on relative measurements to landmarks, the locations of which are known in advance. This paper analyzes the sensitivity of absolute positioning techniques to noisy data and landmark configuration, aiming to determine landmark positioning guidelines to improve the accuracy of the material handling vehicle's navigation. An error sensitivity map (ESM) shows the critical zones where calculation is especially susceptible to erroneous data. These zones are then combined with the accuracy required by the operational constraints to determine the preferred landmarks' configuration. Results of analytical and simulated tests and their effect on the vehicle's dynamic performance are presented. Finally, an example that incorporates the analysis results is presented.

Cooperation schemes for heterogeneous material-handling vehicle fleets

This study deals with an organization which utilizes wire-guided vehicles as its material-handling system and undergoes an expansion, as a result additional material-handling devices are required. In the event, choosing similar vehicles to those currently operating in the manufacturing facility is not a viable alternative, the organization can still decide to maintain a homogeneous vehicle fleet by replacing all vehicles with advanced more expensive free-ranging vehicles. On the other hand, the organization can decide to reuse the old wire-guided vehicles while purchasing only a few new free-ranging vehicles, creating a heterogeneous vehicle fleet. This study presents two different cooperation schemes to control a heterogeneous vehicle fleet, which achieve similar operational performances as a homogeneous fleet of free-ranging vehicles. The study uses simulation to develop control strategies and to determine the system's parameters. Three different scenarios are used to test these control strategies. Finally, an operational and economical comparison analysis between the different cooperation schemes is performed.

Dispatching rail-guided vehicles and scheduling jobs in a flexible manufacturing system

The objective of this paper is to develop and evaluate dispatching strategies of rail-guided vehicles (RGVs) in the load/unload area of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) with a bi-directional track. Our focus is on the load/unload area of the system, but the effective combination of RGV dispatching and scheduling rules to prioritize jobs in the buffer storage between the load/unload area and the machine centre is also explored. Five RGV dispatching rules are developed and evaluated along with the common scheduling rules using computer simulation. The statistical analyses based on the simulation show that the RGV dispatching rules with priority given to parts outperformed the other dispatching rules in throughput and part flow time. The scheduling rules may or may not significantly affect the system performance, depending on the characteristics of the job queue. The result on RGV dispatching reveals the need to efficiently dispatch the material handling vehicle despite its simple structure and straight routing.

A mathematical programming approach to simultaneous unit-load and fleet-size optimisation in material handling systems design

This paper develops a model for simultaneously determining the optimal performance-based unit-load and fleet sizes for material handling vehicles serving work stations in a manufacturing system. The mathematical programming model maximises the number of units transported by the material handling vehicle during a given production cycle. The optimisation model simultaneously specifies the unit-load and fleet sizes, based on material transportation requirements and system characteristics.

A decision-making approach to the operation of flexible manufacturing systems

This paper introduces a generic decision-making framework for assigning resources of a manufacturing system to production tasks. Resources are broadly defined production units, such as machines, human operators, or material handling vehicles; and tasks are activities performed by resources. In the specific context of FMS, resources correspond to individual machines; tasks correspond to operations to be performed on parts. The framework assumes a hierarchical structure of the system and calls for the execution of four consecutive steps to make a decision for the assignment of a resource to a task. These steps are 1) establishment of decision-making criteria, 2) formation of alternative assignments, 3) estimation of the consequences of the assignments, and 4) selection of the best alternative assignment. This framework has been applied to an existing FMS as an operational policy that decides what task will be executed on which resource of this FMS. Simulation runs provide some initial results of the application of this policy. It is shown that the policy provides flexibility in terms of system performance and computational effort.