Optimal Stack Layout in a Sea Container Terminal with Automated Lifting Vehicles

Container terminal performance is largely determined by its design decisions, which include the number and type of quay cranes (QCs), stack cranes (SCs), transport vehicles, vehicle travel path, and stack layout. The terminal design process is complex because it is affected by factors such as topological constraints, stochastic interactions among the quayside, vehicle transport and stackside operations. Further, the orientation of the stack layout (parallel or perpendicular to the quayside) plays an important role in the throughput time performance of the terminals. Previous studies in this area typically use deterministic optimization or probabilistic travel time models to analyze the effect of stack layout on terminal throughput times, and ignore the stochastic interactions among the resou