Search

In the container shipping industry, a company could have an advantage over its competitors while its liner container shipping system (LCSS) can successfully transport the requested demand. However, some uncertainties such as unstable sea state, terrible weather, sailor's negligence, and the condition of vessels would affect the number of slots on the vessel to place containers when shipping on different legs. Thus, that number should be regarded as stochastic. At the container terminal, containers are loaded from and unloaded to the vessel ship by the quay cranes. The number of available quay cranes at each terminal is also stochastic because of the reservation of other competitors. Therefore, this study proposes an algorithm that constructs an LCSS as a stochastic liner container shipping network (SLCSN) model to analyze the network reliability. Network reliability is defined as the probability that all vessels in the SLCSN can satisfy the demands within the time threshold. For an executive of the liner container shipping company, the network reliability can be utilized as the performance indicator to make an appropriate managerial decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-dimensional numerical simulations were performed to study concurrent-flow flame spread over a thin solid in microgravity. The main variable is the ambient flow velocity. Results were validated against recent microgravity experiments (Saffire) where samples 41 cm wide were burned in two different flow velocities. The numerical results showed that, when flow velocity increases, the average radiative heat flux out of the solid surface in the pyrolysis region remains constant. The average convective heat flux decreases and the average radiative heat flux into the solid surface increases. The average net heat flux remains approximately constant. Additional simulations using different ambient pressures and oxygen percentages further showed that, while away from extinction conditions, the average net heat flux in the sample pyrolysis region and hence the average solid mass burning rate are insensitive to the ambient conditions (i.e., oxygen percentage, flow speed, pressure). Furthermore, the steady-state flame length is mainly controlled by the rate of oxygen entrainment into the gas-phase reaction zone and the average solid mass burning rate. Based on these observations, analytical model was developed to correlate the flame spread rate and flame length to ambient conditions. It predicts that, for concurrent-flow flame spread at steady state, the flame length and flame spread rate have linear dependency on the ambient pressure and the forced flow velocity, and a second order dependency on the ambient oxygen percentage. The proposed correlations were tested against numerical simulations as well as a collection of data from previous microgravity experiments in a wide range of ambient conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental apparatus and a standard operating procedure (SOP) are developed to collect time-resolved data on the gas compositions and fire characteristics during and post-thermal runaway of lithium-ion battery (LIB) cells. A 18650 cylindrical cell is conditioned to a desired state-of-charge (SOC; 30%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) before each experiment. The conditioned cell is forced into a thermal runaway by an electrical heating tape at a constant heating rate (10 °C/min) in an environmental chamber (volume: ~600 L). The chamber is connected to a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) gas analyzer for real-time concentration measurements. Two camcorders are used to record major events, such as cell venting, thermal runaway, and the subsequent burning process. The conditions of the cell, such as surface temperature, mass loss, and voltage, are also recorded. With the data obtained, cell pseudo-properties, venting gas compositions, and venting mass rate can be deduced as functions of cell temperature and cell SOC. While the test procedure is developed for a single cylindrical cell, it can be readily extended to test different cell formats and study fire propagation between multiple cells. The collected experimental data can also be used for the development of numerical models for LIB fires.