Minimum Transportation Research Articles

A Proposed Technique to Resolve Transportation Problem by Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers

Objectives: To find the best optimal solution of transportation problem in fuzzy environment Method: We proposed a new method to find the optimal solution. Findings: This study introduces a Median method. By applying the same we transform the fuzzy transportation problem to an exquisite valued one and subsequently into a new proposed process to uncover the fuzzy realistic solution. Also, we find a minimum transportation cost. Novelty: The numerical illustration demonstrates that the new projected method for managing the transportation problems on fuzzy algorithms. AMS Mathematics Subject Classification (2010): 90C08, 90C90 Keywords Median, Median of Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers, Median of Triangular Fuzzy Numbers, Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers, Transportation Problem, and Fuzzy Transportation Problem

Investigation of cuttings transport in a horizontal well with high-speed visualization and electrical resistance tomography technique

In a horizontal well drilling operation, a part of generated drill cuttings tends to settle down at a lower annular section. Formation of sand bed causes several operational issues such as low rate of penetration and stuck drill pipe. In this study, a lab-scale experimental work is carried out to investigate hole cleaning in the extended reach and horizontal drilling operation. This work focuses on the visualization of the flow behaviour of drill cuttings in the horizontal annular section. A 6.16 m-long horizontal well test section with an outer diameter of 4.5 inch (11.43 cm) and an inner diameter of 2.5 inch (6.35 cm) is used in this study. Four non-Newtonian Herschel-Bulkley fluids are tested as the drilling mud. Solid glass beads of 2.5–3.0 mm with a density of 2650 kg/m3 are utilized as the drill cuttings with two different solid concentrations. The flow behaviour in the horizontal annular section is analyzed with a high-speed imaging technology at 2000 frames/second and electrical resistance tomography (ERT) technique. The effects of fluid rheology, fluid velocity, drill pipe rotation, and eccentricity on the cuttings transport are investigated. This study showed that an optimum drill pipe rotation of 80 RPM and a minimum transport performance number (TPN) of 70 is required for efficient hole cleaning in horizontal well section. This study also reveals that fluid rheology has a significant effect on the minimum transport velocity (MTV). A flow regime analysis revealed that a turbulent flow regime is required for effective hole cleaning without sand bed formation. The mechanistic three-layer model of cuttings transport is experimentally verified with high-speed visualization techniques. Furthermore, this study introduces the concept of estimating the instantaneous annular solid volume fraction by the ERT system as well as visualization of solid bed distribution in the annulus section.

A GRASP/Path‐Relinking algorithm for the traveling purchaser problem

AbstractThe Traveling Purchaser Problem (TPP) is a generalization of the TSP that consists in choosing which nodes (markets) to visit to create a tour that allows to buy a set of products at minimum transportation and purchasing cost. The TPP has gained attention due to the computational challenges it poses and the potential applications it can support in today's technology‐driven industry. This paper presents a GRASP‐based methodology for the TPP based on three constructive procedures (route‐first, purchase‐first, and purchase‐and‐route) and two local search operators (insert and remove). The methodology is strengthened with a Path Relinking strategy to improve the GRASP performance by re‐combining a set of elite solutions and with a Filtering strategy to improve the algorithm's efficiency by avoiding local search operations on the least promising solutions. The algorithm is tested with 855 instances of the asymmetric TPP and 190 instances of the symmetric TPP. Computational results prove the benefit of including the Path Relinking and Filtering strategies and suggest that the purchase‐first constructive procedure is the most competitive in terms of objective function value with little extra effort in execution time with respect to the other constructive procedures. Our results outperform published results for the asymmetric TPP in a statistically significant way and show competitive performance for the symmetric TPP.

Particle-Transport Mechanism in Liquid/Liquid/Solid Multiphase Pipeline Flow of High-Viscosity Oil/Water/Sand

Summary In this study, an investigation of sand transport in heavy-oil/water multiphase flow is performed. The study is conducted in three multiphase-flow pipeline-test facilities with internal diameters (IDs) of 1, 1, and 3 in. The pipeline orientations relative to the horizontal in the facilities are 0, +30, and 0°, respectively. Oil viscosity of 3.5 and 10.0 Pa·s with sand volume fractions from 0.010 to 0.100 vol% were used in the study. The effects of oil viscosity, upward inclination, sand volume fraction, pipe ID, and water cut on the sand-transport mechanism in pipelines are investigated. In the horizontal test section, flow patterns—namely, dispersed flow (DF), plug flow (PF), plug flow with moving sand bed (PFM), and plug flow with stationary sand bed (PFS)—were identified through flow visualization. In addition to the aforementioned, two flow patterns—stratified wavy flow with moving sand bed (SWM) and stratified wavy flow with dunes (SWD)—were observed in the inclined pipeline orientation. The pressure gradient measured decreased with a decrease in water cut until a minimum value was reached. Beyond the minimum pressure gradient, further reduction in water cut led to an increase in pressure gradient. The sand minimum transport condition (MTC) in the oil/water/sand test was largely the same for the 1-in. 30° upward inclined and the 1-in. horizontal test section. In contrast, that of the 3-in. horizontal test section was considerably higher. An improved MTC predictive correlation is proposed for multiphase heavy-oil/water/sand flow. The proposed correlation outperforms the existing models when tested on the heavy-oil/water/sand data set.

UAVs path planning architecture for effective medical emergency response in future networks

With the advancements of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) technology for use in different environments, it can be easily substituted for traditional transportation in event of emergencies. In the medical domain, UAV can play a vital role in the fast and efficient delivery of first aid and medical supplies. In the current study, safe and smooth UAV navigation from the initial position to the medical emergency location was achieved with optimal path planning through a proposed algorithm. On the notification of patient about his health condition using GSM band, doctor drone was sent from the nearest hospital facility. To avoid traffic congestion the doctor drone provides medical assistance with minimum computational time and transportation cost. The vehicle routing was carried out through proposed algorithms i.e., capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The comparison between the algorithms was carried out at different vehicle capacities and numbers. The CVRP was found to outperform other algorithms with a runtime of 0.06 sec and cost of 419 at vehicle capacity 10, which is 50% less having the same number of the vehicles but increasing the capacities to 20. The results indicate that the effective path planning method could be applied to provide medical aid in real-time with efficacy.

An Improved Data-Driven Model for the Prediction of Minimum Transport Condition for Sand Transport in Multiphase Flow Systems

The correct prediction of minimum transport condition (MTC) is of great importance to the oil and gas industry. The sand deposition is an associated problem of multiphase transportation of oil, gas and or solid. The purpose of this work is to investigate the predictive capability of three different data-driven approaches: Artificial neural networks (ANN), Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system or adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and response surface methodologies (RSM). The models were developed using182 experimental data points with input parameters such as liquid superficial velocity, pipe diameter, particle size, pipe inclination and the output parameter predicted is the minimum transport condition (velocity) for sand particles. The developed models were compared with existing models. The results showed that the three methods performed creditably well in the prediction of MTC with ANFIS having the highest predictive capability with an R2 value of 0.99997 and an average error value of 0.00035836 compared with ANN and RSM having R2 value of 0.9998 and 0.9973 respectively. The three data-driven techniques investigated in this study also outperformed published correlations for the prediction of MTC. The findings from this research can be invaluable for the effective and robust management of sand transport in multiphase flow systems.Keywords— Artificial Intelligence, Fuzzy Inference System, Model, Minimum Transport Condition, Optimization methods, Response Surface Methodology

ПОВЫШЕНИЕ КАЧЕСТВА ПРОЕКТОВ РЕМОНТНО-ОБСЛУЖИВАЮЩИХ ПРЕДПРИЯТИЙ С ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕМ КОМПОЗИЦИОННЫХ ЦЕНТРОВ

Educational and scientific publications orient future specialists of the repair and maintenance profile when studying the discipline of enterprise design to optimize technical solutions according to the criteria of minimum production area of premises and buildings and transport work for moving machines and aggregates, but they do not offer qualitative and quantitative methods of this optimization. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in developing the measures to reduce the production area and transport work on the movement of products during the reconstruction and technical re-equipment of repair and maintenance enterprises. (Materials and methods) Geometric optimization according to the criteria of transport work for the movement of repaired and serviced products and the production area of the production building has been used during the study. The layout decision of the industrial buildings subject to technological requirements, restrictions, safety and rational due to the location of the plots, the minimum transport equation serviced (repairable) goods and traffic flows. (Results and discussion) The article presents the concept of a composite center in the layout of the production building of a repair and maintenance enterprise in design practice. The location relative to each other plots of maintenance and repair of operational and integrated operating company, as well as disassembly and cleaning, restoration of parts and a pick-assembly plots repair company that will ensure the movement of goods heaviest path of least length are justified. (Conclusions) The use of composite centers in design work during the reconstruction and technical re-equipment of production sites of operational, maintenance and repair enterprises with the optimization procedure allows you to obtain a housing layout with a minimum production area and the least transport work to move the repaired or serviced products.

Multi-Objective Green 4-dimensional transportation problems for breakable incompatible items with different fixed charge payment policies

Transportation system approximately contributes one-seventh of total world pollution, which demands to be minimized. Against some costs, developing countries have recently introduced FASTag and advanced payment systems at toll plazas of National Highways for vehicles’ non-stoppage continuous run, which minimizes travel time. Usually, transport companies try to operate at minimum time and cost. Transportation cost goes up when some items are incompatible i.e., not to be transported together. The above objectives are conflicting with each other. Nowadays, due to infrastructural developments, there are several connecting roads between different cities (sources/destinations). Considering all these facts, to find a trade-off between the above objectives, multi-objective incompatible and breakable/damageable multi-items 4-dimensional transportation models for minimum cost, time and carbon emission are developed and solved by different methods. Formulated multi-objective models are reduced to single objective ones by three ways- Weighted sum technique, Max-min Zimmermann technique and Neutrosophic programming technique and then Generalized Reduced Gradient method is used for solutions using Lingo 11.0 software. Applying the appropriate method for removing the non-linearity expressions in the constraint part of the models, the converted linear problems are also solved by using an integer linear programming tool, Cplex 12.9.0. The proposed methods are tested against two standard test functions, and Pareto front solutions by weighted sum technique are compared graphically. A real-life example is presented for incompatible items, and the effects of ‘green corridor’ on fixed charge are discussed. Also, the impact of considerations of different paths and incompatibility among the items on transportation cost, time, and carbon emission are demonstrated through numerical experiments. It is shown that the routes of the shortest distance and minimum unit transportation cost are not always the optimum choices for the model’s minimum cost. Here, road’s specific constants also play an essential role. For minimization of the objectives, trade-off between carbon emission, total transportation cost, and time is demonstrated. To identify the best suitable model among the formulated ones, the ‘TOPSIS’ method is used for ranking, and in this connection, some managerial decisions are derived.

An Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Multi-objective Optimization of Cold Chain Distribution Path

Optimization of the distribution path of cold chain distribution path has always been a focus and hot issue in the field of cold chain logistics. In this paper, firstly, a mathematical model with minimum transportation cost and cold cost as the optimization objectives is established, and then an artificial bee colony algorithm to solve the multi-objective model is designed. Finally, an experimental example is generated by combining relevant literature example and random method to verify the effectiveness of the model and algorithm, and the convergence process of the example solution is also given.

Optimization of River Transport Services Using the Minimum Transportation Standard Reference to Improve Community Satisfaction

The community need for ferry transportation in Indonesia is increasingly important to support equitable development across the disparate regions and cater to the growing demand for passenger transportation. However, there are several crossings that are not yet optimal, despite the implementation of the Minimum Service Standards for Ferry Transportation, namely Ministerial Regulation No. 62 of 2019, which includes several service level variables, namely safety, security, comfort, convenience, equality, and regularity. This article is based on qualitative research and descriptive research and seeks to identify development foci for the ferry transportation sector to improve customer and community satisfaction.
 Keywords: Optimization, Ferry Transportation, Satisfaction

Optimization of e-commerce distribution center location

Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, countries locked their borders. Thus, international shipping deteriorates drastically. Simultaneously, social distancing increased the need for immediate online consumption and fast home delivery. In the non-digital world, products still need to be shipped to their destination using trucks, trains, airplanes, and ships. Simultaneously, requirements for volumes of goods, transport costs, external limiting factors, etc., must be precisely defined. The article aims to find the optimal location selection solution based on the created mathematical model of the Modified Steiner-Weber Problem with restrictive conditions. The model allows for the central warehouse's optimal location and minimizes distribution costs from the central warehouse to sub-warehouses/branches located in individual EU countries. The mathematical model has been applied to a case study of a selected e-commerce dealing, which has established branches in capital cities but does not have an established central warehouse. Systematization of literature sources and approaches to solving the problem of e-commerce distribution center location showed that 86% of the studied companies plan to use on-demand warehousing in the next three to five years. Therefore, the need for warehousing would be preserved. The authors noted that they do not necessarily need to have it in-house. Consequently, fulfillment centers and warehouses would likely continue to be a significant component in the future logistics system. This research would like to stress how important the management of the effective optimization of e-commerce distribution center location is and how to achieve it. The success of Amazon in the US, Europe, and Alibaba in China has genuinely redefined consumer expectations. With the emergence of services like Amazon Prime, consumers now expect same-day delivery. The solution enabling this evolution has been a mix of manufacturing where the production costs are optimal, just-in-time shipping, highly automated fulfillment centers, and mobile connectivity growth. The proposed model results showed that the best location for a central location and storage center concerning the e-commerce environment, including minimum annual transport costs, is near Bristol in the United Kingdom. Eighty-six percent of the companies in the study plan to use on-demand warehousing in the next three to five years, and the solution enabling this evolution has been a combination of manufacturing where the production costs are optimal, just-in-time shipping, highly automated fulfillment centers, and, to a growing extent, mobile connectivity.

Multiscale modelling of charge transport in P3HT:DIPBI bulk heterojunction organic solar cells.

Charge transport properties of a P3HT:DIPBI bulk heterojunction solar cell are modelled by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations based on a morphology obtained from coarse-grained molecular dynamics. Different methods for calculating the hopping integrals entering the charge transfer rates are compared and calibrated for hole transport in amorphous P3HT. The influence of intermolecular and intramolecular charge transfer on the total charge carrier mobility and hence the power conversion efficiency is investigated in detail. An analysis of the most probable pathways with low resistance for hole transport is performed, establishing a connection between charge mobility and morphology.

System dynamics model of production-inventory-routing system in the green supply chain

Fierce competition in the global markets forced companies to improve the design and management of supply chains, because companies are always looking for more profit and higher customer satisfaction. The emergence of the green supply chain is one of the most important developments of the last decade. It provides an opportunity for companies to adjust their supply chains according to environmental goals and sustainability. The integrated production-inventory-routing is a new field that aims to optimize these three decision-making levels. It can be described as follow: a factory produces one or more products, and sells them to several customers (by direct delivery or a specific customer chain). The current study aims to model a production-inventory-routing system using a system dynamics approach to design a green supply chain under uncertain conditions. For this purpose, first, the association between selected variables was determined. Then, the proposed model was validated. Finally, to identify variables with the highest influence, four scenarios were developed. The results indicated that minimum total transportation cost, the total warehouse capacity of the supply chain, and the maximum production rate are the most influential strategies to achieve ideal condition.

ПОВЫШЕНИЕ КАЧЕСТВА ПРОЕКТОВ РЕМОНТНО-ОБСЛУЖИВАЮЩИХ ПРЕДПРИЯТИЙ С ИСПОЛЬЗОВАНИЕМ КОМПОЗИЦИОННЫХ ЦЕНТРОВ

Educational and scientific publications orient future specialists of the repair and maintenance profile when studying the discipline of enterprise design to optimize technical solutions according to the criteria of minimum production area of premises and buildings and transport work for moving machines and aggregates, but they do not offer qualitative and quantitative methods of this optimization. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in developing the measures to reduce the production area and transport work on the movement of products during the reconstruction and technical re-equipment of repair and maintenance enterprises. (Materials and methods) Geometric optimization according to the criteria of transport work for the movement of repaired and serviced products and the production area of the production building has been used during the study. The layout decision of the industrial buildings subject to technological requirements, restrictions, safety and rational due to the location of the plots, the minimum transport equation serviced (repairable) goods and traffic flows. (Results and discussion) The article presents the concept of a composite center in the layout of the production building of a repair and maintenance enterprise in design practice. The location relative to each other plots of maintenance and repair of operational and integrated operating company, as well as disassembly and cleaning, restoration of parts and a pick-assembly plots repair company that will ensure the movement of goods heaviest path of least length are justified. (Conclusions) The use of composite centers in design work during the reconstruction and technical re-equipment of production sites of operational, maintenance and repair enterprises with the optimization procedure allows you to obtain a housing layout with a minimum production area and the least transport work to move the repaired or serviced products.

Development of model to eliminate sand trapping in horizontal fluid pipelines

Sand deposition in pipelines during crude oil transportation is a serious industrial problem; these problems often lead to extra expenses in the course of transportation, causing a threat to the environment and economic damage. The intent of this study is to model the minimum condition required to transport sand particles as dispersed phase (Suspended particles) in flowing crude in pipelines. A mechanistic approach based on force balance and particle trajectory of Lagrangian Multiphase modeling was used to develop a model for determining the minimum transport condition for sand flowing in petroleum to avoid sand trapping along the bed of the pipeline. The model developed is a quadratic function of slip velocity and the findings was compared with experimental data and other three models and found to compete favorably. Consistency exists between the predicted outcomes and the experimental results with a relative error of 1.1%. This model will be useful for oil and gas industries worldwide for accurate prediction of critical suspending velocities of petroleum containing sand and other tiny particles to avoid deposition of particles along the pipeline and eliminate corrosion-related danger in the pipelines caused by the particles.

The single-vehicle two-echelon one-commodity pickup and delivery problem

We present in this paper a generalization of the one-commodity pickup and delivery traveling salesman problem where each customer supplies or demands a given amount of a certain product. The objective is to design a minimum cost two-echelon transportation network. The first echelon is the route of a capacitated vehicle that visits some customers, and the second echelon consists in the allocation of the non-visited customers to visited ones. The customers that must be visited by the vehicle and the ones that must be allocated to others are not predefined. We present three mathematical models for the problem, design an exact branch-and-cut algorithm to solve it, and show extensive computational results on benchmark instances.

Numerical simulation of building wall incorporating phase change material for cooling load reduction

Phase change material (PCM) placed in the building wall changes the temperature profile within the wall and thus influences the heat transport to indoor environment. The effectiveness of these building walls depends on PCM location within the wall, PCM melting temperature, and PCM layer thickness. Considering these parameters, the numerical simulation has been conducted for a typical building wall and the obtained results are reported in terms of melt fraction of PCM and heat flux at the inner surface of the wall. From these results it is found that for the minimum heat transport to the indoor environment, the PCM layer should be embedded in between the fiberglass insulation layers, melting temperature of PCM should be in the range of indoor air temperature and PCM thickness should be higher. The numerical simulation has also been conducted considering actual weather conditions into account for three consecutive days with four different PCM (RT-26, RT-25, n-octadecane and RT-28). For three consecutive days, the percentage reduction of heat transport to the indoor environment is obtained 33.18%, 33.94%, 34.40% and 37.13% by using RT-26, RT-25, n-octadecane and RT-28 PCM, respectively.

Mapping Small-Scale Horizontal Velocity Field in Panzhinan Waterway by Coastal Acoustic Tomography.

Mapping small-scale high-precision velocity fields is of great significance to oceanic environment research. Coastal acoustic tomography (CAT) is a frontier technology used to observe large-scale velocity field in the horizontal slice. Nonetheless, it is difficult to observe the velocity field using the CAT in small-scale areas, specifically where the flow field is complex such as ocean ranch and artificial upwelling areas. This paper conducted a sound transmission experiment using four 50 kHz CAT systems in the Panzhinan waterway. Notably, sound transmission based on the round-robin method was recommended for small-scale CAT observation. The travel time between stations, obtained by correlation of raw data, was applied to reconstruct the horizontal velocity fields using Tapered Least Square inversion. The minimum net volume transport was 8.7 m3/s at 12:32, 1.63% of the total inflow volume transport indicating that the observational errors were acceptable. The relative errors of the range-average velocity calculated by differential travel time were 1.54% (path 2) and 0.92% (path 6), respectively. Moreover, the inversion velocity root-mean-square errors (RMSEs) were 0.5163, 0.1494, 0.2103, 0.2804 and 0.2817 m/s for paths 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, respectively. The feasibility and acceptable accuracy of the CAT method in the small-scale velocity profiling measurement were validated. Furthermore, a three-dimensional (3-D) velocity field mapping should be performed with combined analysis in horizontal and vertical slices.

An Iterative Solution Technique to Minimize the Average Transportation Cost of Capacitated Transportation Problem with Bounds on Rim Conditions

The average transportation cost minimization of capacitated transportation problem with bounds on rim conditions (CTPBRC) is an important optimization problem due to the requirement of low unit cost consumption in production system. In the literature, there is only one approach to solving a special case of this problem, but it is not applicable to the general case. In this paper, this problem is reduced to a series of finding the minimum cost maximum flow in a network with lower and upper arc capacities, and two iterative algorithms are proposed as more generalized solution method for this problem as compared to the existing approach. Computational experiments on randomly generated instances validate that the two iterative algorithms are generally able to find the minimum average transportation cost solution to CTPBRC efficiently for the general case, in which one iterative algorithm has higher efficiency than the other for large size instances.

Using genetic algorithm to solve multiple traveling salesman problem and considering Carbon emissions

Objectives: The Multiple Travelling Salesman problem is a complex combinatorial optimization problem which is a variance of the Traveling Salesman Problem,where a lot of salesmen are utilized in the solution. In this work a cold chain logistics and route optimization model with minimum transport cost, carbon cost and Refrigeration cost are constructed. Methods: A genetic algorithm is then proposed to solve for the Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem with time windows while transport cost, carbon emission cost and refrigeration cost is minimized. Findings: It was observed that the algorithm evolved towards the direction of the optimal value of the fitness function. Novelty: There are a number of studies that considered tournament selection strategy but just a few have applied genetic algorithm considering insertion method to solve a Multiple Travelling salesman Problem. This study uses insertion method to obtain optimal solution. Also, the researcher considered time windows, transport cost, carbon emission cost and refrigeration cost. Keywords: Genetic algorithm method; cold-logistics; multiple travelling salesman problem