A Targeted Study on Simulation and Optimization of Shipping Systems

Over the last four decades, containers have found their special place as suitable and necessary tool for packaging in maritime transportation. With growing increase in container manufacturing, numbers of container terminals and their competition become significant. This study aims to simulate the container terminal operation and its improvement. Simulation is carried out by Arena software. For this purpose, first base model with primary assumptions is simulated and results are obtained. At the end of first stage several scenarios are defined and using the software, the required results are obtained. Then, we seek a way to improve the existing model to obtain better results. There are several methods for this. Since in this system there are several main factors that affect performance of the entire system, decision making management, simulation and optimization methods in shipping systems based on design of experiment are used. Then the effect of the factors on evaluation function, intended by a decision maker, are determined. After simulation, the obtained results are examined by the Taguchi method to determine which level in each factor is the best state and which factor is more effective in the entire process. Results demonstrated that number of berths are the most important factor in the process improvement and it should receive more attention.

Wear Characteristics on the can Opener of SUS 420J2

Tinplate containers with high strength, good formability and corrosion resistance, has been widely used in food, beverages, grease, chemicals and other applications. In recent years, because of the significantly progress of tinplate container manufacturing technology, many tinplate cans have been opened in easy-open rings. However, a large number of food cans still use can openers as an important tool for opening cans. At present, in addition to the general traditional can opener is a single-edged knife in a lever manner, the other like roller, serrated or electric are driven by a gear wheel to rotate around the can to achieve the purpose of opening the can. Moreover, the wheel materials mainly are made from the stainless steels. To investigate wear characteristics on the can opener of the stainless steel of SUS 420J2, the experiments were conducted by the self-developed friction tester and its measure system in this study. According to the results, the effects of contact stress and sliding speeds on the wear of cutlery of the openers can be clarified.

Numerical Shape Optimization in Industrial Glass Blowing

Industrial glass blowing is an essential stage of manufacturing hollow glass containers, e.g., bottles, jars. A glass preform is brought into a mold and inflated with compressed air until it reaches the mold shape. A simulation model for blowing glass containers based on finite element methods, which adopts a level set method to track the glass–air interfaces, has previously been developed [Giannopapa and Groot, 2007, “A Computer Simulation Model for the Blow–Blow Forming Process of Glass Containers,” Paper No. PVP2007-26408, pp. 79–86; Giannopapa, C. G., 2008, “Development of a Computer Simulation Model for Blowing Glass Containers,” ASME J. Manuf. Sci. Eng., 130(4), p. 041003; Giannopapa and Groot, 2011, “Modeling the Blow–Blow Forming Process in Glass Container Manufacturing: A Comparison Between Computations and Experiments,” ASME J. Fluids Eng., 133(2), p. 021103]. A considerable challenge in glass blowing is the inverse problem: to determine an optimal preform from the desired container shape. In previous work of the authors [Groot et al., 2009, “Numerical Optimisation of Blowing Glass Parison Shapes,” ASME Paper No. PVP2009-77946; Groot et al., 2011, “Development of a Numerical Optimization Method for Blowing Glass Parison Shapes,” ASME J. Manuf. Sci. Eng., 133(1), p. 011010] a numerical method was introduced for optimizing the shape of the preform. The optimization method described the shape of the preform by parametric curves, e.g., Bezier-curves or splines, and employed a modified Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm to find the optimal positions of the control points of the curves. A combined finite difference and Broyden method was used to compute the Jacobian of the residual with respect to changes in the positions of the control points. The objective of this paper is to perform an error analysis of the optimization method previously introduced and to improve its accuracy and performance. The improved optimization method is applied to modeled containers of industrial relevance, which shows its usefulness for practical applications.

Modeling the Blow-Blow Forming Process in Glass Container Manufacturing: A Comparison Between Computations and Experiments

The blow-blow forming process is a widely used technique in glass container manufacturing (e.g., production of glass bottles and jars). This process typically takes few seconds and is characterized by large deformations and temperature gradients. In the work of Giannopapa (2008, “Development of a Computer Simulation Model for Blowing Glass Containers,” ASME J. Manuf. Sci. Eng., 130, p. 041003), the development of a computer simulation model for glass blowing was presented and demonstrated on dummy problems with an initially uniform glass temperature. The objective of this paper is to extend and further develop the simulation model to be used for industrial purposes. To achieve this, both steps of the blow-blow forming process of glass containers are simulated and tested against real industrial problems. In this paper, a nonuniform temperature distribution is considered for the blowing of the preform, which is reconstructed from temperature data provided by the industry. The model is validated by means of several examples regarding conservation properties, behavior of the flow, and comparison of the glass thickness with experimental measurements. Furthermore, by means of these examples, the sensitivity of the glass thickness to inaccuracies in the measurement and reconstruction of the initial temperature distribution is verified.