Inland Shipping & Container Handling: Feasibility study on scalable inland container transport and terminal concepts

Small scale inland shipping, especially in the case of transported containers, is used only marginally compared to its capacity. The small inland waterways have abundant capacity to accommodate up to 700 percent more transport. On the other hand, road based container transport is cause for external damages in the form of congestion, emissions and accidents. All that are of course unwanted. To reduce the overall external damage (monetized into cost) for container distribution a modeshift from truck to small scale inland vessel is worth promoting. This thesis researched the feasibility of designing radically renewing small scale container distribution concepts for both vessel and inland terminal. A scalable container carrier concept series is designed and tested for feasibility. Goal of the concept vessel was to design a dedicated series around its cargo, the container. Existing inland vessels of smaller dimensions have holds of suboptimal dimensions, resulting is excess cost. In parallel with the vessel series a scalable container terminal concept has been designed and tested. Goals for the terminal was autonomous operation and low cost per move as existing terminal fail to operate on competitive cost levels for low volumes. The results showed outperformance of competitor alternatives and economic feasibility for both concepts. Results of a case study show the possibility to ship and transship containers to more local, rural terminals at competitive costs levels. Meaning substantially below the costs of existing competition. In addition is the local terminal allocation leading to penetration of the inland waterway network’s capillaries. As a result, shorter pre- and post-haulage operations by truck are required. This increase in sailing distance share and decrease in haulage distance reduces the overall external cost of transport for those specific containers.Marine Technology | Ship Design, Production and Operation