Factors influencing container carriers’ use of coastal shipping

Coastal shipping is one of the most sustainable and economically competitive modes of transportation. This study employs the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to determine the importance of various factors influencing container carriers’ use of coastal shipping. A three-level hierarchical structure with the 17 attributes is proposed and tested. A previous AHP survey in Taiwan has indicated that port policy and infrastructure is the most critical factor influencing the coastal shipping by container carriers followed by operational cost, operational strategy and operational efficiency. Overall, the results indicate that the five most important attributes influencing the use of coastal shipping are simplified customs procedures; leasing a dedicated terminal; transhipment time; a favourable port charge system and efficient terminal operations.     

Experimental study on the nonlinear pressure acting on a high-speed vessel in irregular waves

The present study focuses on the nonlinear behavior of pressure on the hull surface of a high-speed vessel in irregular waves, particularly the pressure responses of alternately wet and dry areas near the waterline and on the bow zone. The vessel has high deadrise angles that may be subject to slight impact and water pile-up effects. A series of experiments in regular and irregular head waves were conducted, and the validity of applying Volterra modeling was investigated. In a previous article using experimental data in regular waves, it was confirmed that the approximate third-order Volterra model adequately simulated the variation of pressure responses in regular waves of different steepness up to a wave amplitude with a wavelength ratio of 0.01, even for the highly nonlinear pressures acting on the abovementioned areas of the hull surface. In this article, further validation for the second part of the study was obtained using experimental data in irregular waves. The frequency response functions obtained from the previous study’s experimental data in regular waves were applied to the third-order Volterra model by combining the input of irregular waves to simulate the responses in irregular waves of sea state five. Then, the spectra and statistics were analyzed. For the motions, accelerations, and pressure responses in irregular waves (as well as for the simulated time histories) variance spectra and statistics such as cumulative distributions of peak values and probability density functions were compared with the experimental results. It was confirmed that even for highly nonlinear and non-Gaussian pressures on the abovementioned areas of the hull surface, the approximate third-order Volterra model simulates the pressure responses in irregular head waves up to a sea state of five with adequate accuracy on deterministic and statistical bases.