Vibration and acceleration levels of multimodal container shipping physical environment

Abstract

In global supply chains, multimodal transportation plays a dominant role in worldwide shipping. The rail, truck, and vessel combination is the most commonly used mode for non‐time sensitive shipments between continents. This study focused on measuring the transportation environment effects (vibration and acceleration levels) in 40‐foot ISO container shipments using multiple modes of transport, originating in Hungary and destined for Mexico, India, and China over several weeks. The study also measured multimodal shipping routes without vessel transportation to China over Trans‐Siberian and Trans‐Manchurian railway lines. The transshipments and handling events in container hubs and terminals were separately analyzed. The results show the comparison of vibration intensity (in PSD) of different route conditions between various continents, and the possibility of acceleration levels during transshipments and handling events. The measured data show that extreme acceleration levels in vertical direction (9.37 G) occur while containers are handled in a seaport, and in lateral (4.45 G) and longitudinal (5.55 G) directions while they are transshipped by truck to rail container terminals. The rail vibration levels in Russia and China showed a lower intensity in the frequency range of 1 to 15 Hz, and higher between 15 and 200 Hz than in Europe; the lowest vibration levels occurred when the containers traveled on the sea, and truck vibration levels were very similar to previous research and ISTA protocols.

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

“…The vibration data were filtered to remove all undesirable events from the analysis, such as non-vibration related movement caused by stopping or slow traveling speeds. That is, events below 0.05 rms G were filtered out [34,35].…”

The case for reviewing laboratory‐based road transport simulations for packaging optimisation

“…The majority of the numerous studies that have been published on the topic clearly show that measured PDS vary significantly from what standard organisations recommend. 16,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Only a few isolated examples involving specific vehicle types indicate some similarities to the standard spectra. 8,[25][26][27][28][29] Understandably, given the difficulties associated in undertaking such vibration surveys, all such studies focus on a specific geographic locations and include a limited number of vehicle types.…”

On the parameters that influence road vehicles vibration levels

“…Since the introduction of powerful and easy‐to‐use vibration data recorders in the early 1990s, a significant number of studies have been undertaken to characterise specific distribution environments using various vehicle types and configurations and road types 16–44 . These works all focus on various aspects of road vehicle vibrations and report a variety of findings including the vibration spectra and the rms levels specific to the conditions of their research.…”

“…Uncovering the statistical character of road vehicle vibrations was the main motivation for a number of more recent studies. These involved continuous and time‐triggered measurement of vibrations for significant periods on a variety of typical transport vehicles travelling over a range of road types and the reporting of mean rms values along with various statistical distributions 37–43 and included data from multiple locations on fully loaded B‐double (nine axles) trailers with air suspension travelling on a 3300‐km‐long interstate in Australia 44 …”