As container volumes are increasing, ports and container terminals discover that their key resources, such as quays, quay cranes and storage space, are not available in the quantities required to adequately respond to the new situation.

Therefore, the terminals will find themselves in need for addressing their respective investment strategies.

Trafalquar rationalises investments in equipment

Strategic Terminal Model

To enable ports and container terminals to assess their main parameters against a long-term rise in volumes, TBA has developed the strategic terminal model TRAFALQUAR. Given the increasing service requirements of vessels, the current industry benchmarks, such as TEU/m quay, are often outdated and can no long be applied when determining the optimal terminal setup.

TRAFALQUAR however allows container terminals to prepare for the future as it evaluates the characteristics of that particular terminal against the changing environment and rationalises the trade-offs between vessel service and:

• Quay length;
• Number, type and performance of quay cranes;
• Yard storage and handling capacity;
• Yard equipment utilisation.

This will ensure that investment decisions specifically optimised for that terminal are made, which will allow the terminal to prepare for changing demands ahead of time.

Traffic Analysis of Quay, Rail and Road

TRAFALQUAR stands for Traffic Analysis of Quay Rail and Road and is TBA's strategic port development modelling solution.

The objective of the TRAFALQUAR simulation software is to assess a port area or a container terminal on its key characteristics. With known container volume developments and service patterns, sample variables that can be applied are quay length, stack size and the number of quay cranes.

TRAFALQUAR simulates up to a year of future vessel arrivals, including variations in arrival times and call sizes, quay crane handling rates and stack size development. By adjusting the key variables, the long term requirements on the terminal's resources and investment strategies become visible.

TRAFALQUAR enables a terminal to obtain answers to the following questions:

• What quay lengths and terminal depths are needed to facilitate different container volume growth scenarios?
• How do vessel waiting times vary with berth length, prioritisation decisions and available access channels?
• How many cranes are required to handle (an increase in) the quay volume?
• What are the average and peak numbers of containers in the terminal and what are the resulting required hourly transport and stack handling capacities?

Vessel Handling and Prioritisation Strategies

TRAFALQUAR includes deep-sea vessels in the simulation exercise based on a weekly berth schedule. These ships are allocated to a specific berth slot. However at arrival, the actual berth itself is assigned upon availability in order to maximise efficiency. TRAFALQUAR then takes the following into account:

• The various vessel types with their typical vessel lengths, vessel drafts and service requirements. Examples of service requirements are the minimum and maximum number of cranes, required vessel productivities and call sizes;
• The typical arrival patterns for specific vessels, including a deviation distribution from their Estimated Time of Arrival;
• The impact of variations in drafts and number of cranes per berth as well as differences in call sizes on the berthing flexibility;
• The possibility of side by side berthing for barges;
• The impact of access channel, locks or tidal variation on vessel draft and vessel traffic;
• The impact of prioritisation strategies that differ by ship type on the vessel's waiting time;
• The impact of variations in wind strengths on the handling time.

Screenshot from Trafalquar

Quay Crane Deployment

The assignment of quay cranes to vessels depends on the required vessel productivity or vessel service time by vessel type. Using the known gross quay crane productivities, a specific number of cranes is assigned in order to achieve the required vessel service time. The following items are supported by TRAFALQUAR:

• The different types of quay cranes available and the specific performance characteristics per vessel type for each of these;
• The allowed maximum and the required minimum number of cranes per vessel;
• The deployment of quay cranes in relation to the shift pattern;
• The constant monitoring of handling progress against the required service time in order to reassign cranes when needed;
• The allocation of service time to vessels arriving within their given time window compared to the allocation of service time to those arriving off schedule.

Modal split distribution and stack processes

In TRAFALQUAR the modal split for transhipment, trucks, trains, barges and feeders can be specified separately for import and export purposes.The average and peak stack sizes and handling performances can each be evaluated. Included are:

• The configuration of weekly and hourly arrival patterns for the two landside modalities (rail and road);
• Stack monitoring based on vessel arrivals, landside arrivals and dwell time distributions to determine the average and peak stack sizes;
• The impact of the different container types, such as full dry, reefers, empties and IMO-containers.

Container Terminals - Results and Scenario Analysis

With TRAFALQUAR, container terminals gather insight on vessel service times, waiting times, quay and crane occupancies and the required yard handling performance levels. Evaluated scenarios typically differ in growth rates (of volumes, call sizes and/or number of ships), number of cranes and crane performances, and priority levels for different vessel types.

Strategic Port Development with TRAFALQUAR

TRAFALQUAR studies are designed to be included in strategic port development evaluations and terminal design and optimisation studies. They provide fast feedback (just one to two weeks lead time) on the key terminal parameters. In particular, the rate of occurrence of peak scenarios will get rationalised by the resulting output, allowing terminals to operate more efficiently.

TRAFALQUAR has been applied in studies for at least forty different terminals over the last five years.

Author Information - Yvo Saanen

Managing Director

Yvo A. Saanen (MSc in Systems Engineering, PhD on the design and simulation of robotized container terminals, both Delft University of Technology) is managing director and founder (1996) of TBA, a leading simulation consultancy company in The Netherlands.

He heads the department that supports ports and terminal operators all over the world in their design process of container terminals by means of simulation. During the last 11 years, he has carried out over 50 large terminal design projects, ranging from long term development, process improvement, terminal extensions, redesign of handling systems, to design of green-field terminals.

Besides Yvo Saanen is a lecturer at Delft University of Technology, Lloyd’s Maritime Academy and the institute of Maritime Economics and Logistics (Erasmus University Rotterdam), teaching simulation and logistics. In various bodies, he lectures about terminal design by means of simulation.

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