Analysis and Diagnosis of Truck Transport Routes in Underground Mines Using Transport Time Data Collected through Bluetooth Beacons and Tablet Computers

In this study, we developed a system to collect and analyze log data related to truck travel times in underground mines using Bluetooth beacons and tablet computers. When a signal from beacons installed at a major underground mine is received by a truck-mounted tablet computer, the beacon information is collected and uploaded to a cloud server. A data processing program integrates the uploaded log data files into a single file, calculating the statistical values for each section of the transport route. The developed system was applied to a limestone underground mine located in Jeongseon, Korea, to diagnose and analyze the transport routes in the study area. As a result of this analysis, it was possible to select sections in which the truck transport time was stable and sections in which it was unstable. Consequently, the transport route could be classified into four types based on the distribution and fluctuations in the truck transport time data. Moreover, it was possible to analyze the causes of the stable and unstable sections through production logs and field staff interviews. The developed system could be used as a tool to improve transport operations by diagnosing and analyzing the truck transport routes of a mine.

Simulating Combined Self-Loading Truck and Semitrailer Truck Transport in the Wood Supply Chain

Forestry faces frequent and severe natural calamities causing high amounts of salvage wood. Especially under mountainous conditions, regional available self-loading truck capacity is often the main limiting factor causing transport capacity bottlenecks. Therefore, innovative logistics strategies are needed to ensure quick transport of high amounts of salvage wood. Consequently, a multi-echelon unimodal transport concept, where timber is synchronously transshipped at a truck terminal with four transshipment lots from self-loading trucks to semitrailers, was modeled by means of a discrete event simulation. The simulation model calculates key performance indicators such as transshipped volumes and costs and support estimations of optimal truck fleet configuration. The results provide cost-optimal truck fleet configurations in terms of the number of self-loading trucks, semitrailers and prime mover trucks for varying transshipment volumes, delivery time to terminal and legal truck payload scenarios. Applying the truck terminal concept considerably decreases the number of self-loading trucks needed to transport the same volume when compared to unimodal wood transport, which is most common under mountainous conditions in Europe. In the majority of delivery time to terminal and terminal transshipment volume scenarios, the number of self-loading trucks was reduced by more than 50%. Increasing the legal gross vehicle weight for timber transport from 44 t up to 50 t reduces the number of self-loading trucks needed by 20% to 38%, depending on the scenario setting. Additionally, less self-loading trucks arriving at the terminal also cuts queuing times and system efficiency increases as transport cost/t is reduced by 6% to 11% depending on the scenario setting. Expanding the truck terminal concept by adding storage capacity as well as varying the number of transshipping lots and also including costs for terminal construction and operations in the economic analyses are promising topics for future studies.

Measurement and Analysis of Vibration Levels for Truck Transport Environment in Korea

The first step in the appropriate packaging design of food, agricultural and industrial products is to conduct an accurate simulation of the vehicle transport environment, in which a power spectral density (PSD) profile is applied. Although several researchers have mentioned the limitations of PSD-based simulation, it is still widely used because accelerated test conditions can be easily generated from the PSD acquired from a particular transport section. In this study, three representative trucks and transport test routes of domestic freight transport were selected to develop a simulation protocol for a truck transport environment in Korea. These studies are needed to compare domestic transport vibration levels with those presented by the International Standards (ASTM: West Conshohocken, USA, ISTA: Chicago, USA) and to simulate damage to packaged products by domestic transport environments. The composite PSD profile for the truck transport environment was established by dividing it into high-and low-level composite PSD profiles representing the top 30% and lower 70%, respectively, of the measured vibration events based on the root-mean-square acceleration (rms G) of the measured vibration events. Also, the effects of these variables on the truck vibration level were analyzed by extracting data corresponding to the truck’s pre-planned travel speed and road conditions in the vibration records measured on the test route. Moreover, kurtosis, skewness, and normal quantile-quantity (Q-Q) analyses were conducted to understand the statistical characteristics of Korea’s truck transport environment. Statistical analysis showed that the measured vibration events had a heavy-tailed distribution and skewed to the right, causing dissymmetry. The overall rms G of the developed high-level and low-level composite PSD profiles in the range from 1 to 250 Hz were 0.47 and 0.32 for leaf-spring trucks and 0.30 and 0.14 for air-ride trucks, respectively.

A Method of Finding HCT Roundwood Corridors for Reduction of GHG Emissions and Fuel Costs in Sweden

Background and Objectives: in Sweden during 2016, 71.6 million metric tonnes (t) of forest biomass (roundwood and forest fuels) were transported by truck, corresponding to approximately 15% of all national goods truck transport. To reduce the environmental impact of forest product transports and meet Swedish climate goals, the use of 90 t high-capacity transport (HCT) trucks on well-chosen routes has been identified as one potential measure. The objective was, therefore, to develop a method of finding the geographical occurrence of potential roundwood HCT corridors for 90 t trucks, as well as estimating their environmental and economic potential in comparison to the conventional 74 t-truck transport system for Swedish conditions. Materials and Methods: the study used data from actual roundwood transports during 2016 along with a digitalization of the Swedish road network (National Road Database, SNVDB) for corridor identification. In four steps we: 1) identified supportive networks, 2) identified flow supporting corridors on the technically supportive networks, 3) applied a calibrated route finder (CRF) to route relevant transports both directly from the landing to the receiver and via the corridor, gathering drive distance information and, for example, 4) analyzed transports fuel consumption and potential CO2 savings. Results: Results showed there was annual potential for 25 HCT corridors throughout Sweden to employ 20 90 t trucks to transport 2.5 Mt of roundwood, reducing up to 5500 t of CO2 and €3.1 M in fuel costs. Conclusions: the study reinforces previous studies’ findings concerning economic and environmental potential using HCT vehicles and identifies terminal establishment and management costs as a bottleneck in successful large-scale implementation of HCT corridors.