SIMULATION MODELING OF THE REAR CARGO FRONTS OF MARINE COAL TERMINALS

Abstract

The issues of simulation of complex transport hubs and systems are considered in the paper. The sea coal terminals, which are complex transport hubs that perform the final operations of railway transport and the initial operations of sea transport, which constitute a single transport process for the transportation of coal, are discussed in the paper. In international and domestic transport science, sea terminals are often considered as queuing systems, the basic principles and patterns of operation of which are explained using the methods of queuing theory. However, the use of exclusively queuing theory methods in the design and calculation of the performance indicators of marine coal terminals often leads to unreliable and underestimated results due to the large number of stochastic processes occurring at the terminals when servicing incoming transport requests. This is due to a significant number of latent factors affecting the quality and intensity of servicing transport requests, as well as the presence of internal parallelism of processes. In this regard, in the modern scientific community, the methods of computer simulation are recognized as the most adequate tool for solving such problems. The creation of digital analogs of complex sea transport nodes in computer programs and the further implementation of simulation experiments makes it possible to obtain much more accurate and visual results on the planned performance of sea terminals, and also provides reliable information about the degree of influence of certain factors on their work processes. The Anylogic environment is chosen for modeling. Using environmental elements, a digital copy of the rear cargo front of the marine coal terminal, which serves the requests of land transport, is created. A detailed explanation of the principles and approach to creating a digital model is provided, all the internal connections of the elements of the digital twin are clarified, and information on the options for setting up and controlling the model, and also brief information on the results obtained, is provided in the paper.