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Continuous material flow systems: analysis of marine ports handling bulk materials

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Abstract

Continuous material flow systems operating in bulk port marine terminals give rise to networks of mineral flows through nodes experiencing random stoppages. Material arrives at the system via trains and departs from the system via ships. Operational aspects of the material flow are quite varied and complicated. Therefore, a decomposition approximation method is proposed to study the steady-state behavior of the system to produce performance measures such as the long run pile levels, down time probabilities and the system throughput. Pseudo failure and repair rates of the subsystems are obtained and the subsystems are studied within an iterative algorithm. Numerical examples are provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Decision Sciences, College of Business Administration, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2406 University Hall, 601 S Morgan Street, MC 294, Chicago, IL, 60607, USA

    Ünsal Özdoğru

  2. CAIT-CCICADA Laboratory for Port Logistics and Security, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

    Tayfur Altiok

Authors
  1. Ünsal Özdoğru
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  2. Tayfur Altiok
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Correspondence to Ünsal Özdoğru.

Additional information

Published posthumously. Prof. Tayfur Altiok passed away unexpectedly on April 14, 2012, while this paper was under review. May he rest in peace.

Appendix: Pseudo valve capacities

Appendix: Pseudo valve capacities

Below are the pseudo capacities of the valves in subsystems analyzed in Sect. 3.

where M 1=min{P(0,S,0)5,P(B,0,0)4} and M 2=min{P(0,S,0)3,P(B,0,0)1}.

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Özdoğru, Ü., Altiok, T. Continuous material flow systems: analysis of marine ports handling bulk materials. Ann Oper Res 231, 79–104 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-012-1201-7

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