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C asked Jeanette F commented

Setting Up a Ferry Line

Hello everyone,


My name is Caner, and I'm a PhD student. I need help with the simulation aspect of my dissertation. Simply put, I need to model a ferry line. I've got the following information:

- Ferry specifications including power, speed, fuel capacity, fuel consumption in litres per nautical mile, passenger and car capacity, and more.

- Price of fuel per litre,

- Coordinates or distances of piers,

- Where ferries are moored,

- Timetables of all lines.


What I need to do first:

- Define piers and ferries,

- Setup lines between piers,

- Define timetables to those lines,

- Make each ferry pick up a line, depart from the pier as per the timetable,

- Go back to the starting positions after completing the schedule.


Second step:

- Set different schedules for weekdays and weekends,

- Define fuel capacity, fuel consumption and monitor fuel usage of each ferry,


Third step:

- Make a ferry go to refuel when fuel capacity reaches a certain threshold: e.g. if the fuel is less than 1 trips worth, alert another ferry to take over its next scheduled departure and go to refuel)

- Get a report of when and how much fuel the ferry got refuelled.


Fourth Step:

- Introduce passenger and cars to be carried for each trip as per a demand formula. Get a report about how many passengers transported.

I'm aiming for more but I believe these are the first steps I need to take.


All help is appreciated.

FlexSim 21.1.3
flexsim 21.1.3linesferrypublic transportation modelling
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Jeanette F avatar image Jeanette F ♦♦ commented ·

Hi @Caner P , was Jeanette F's answer helpful? If so, please click the red "Accept" button at the bottom of one of their answers. Or if you still have questions, add a comment and we'll continue the conversation.

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Jeanette F answered C commented

Hello @Caner P,

This sounds like it will be an interesting project to model. Do you have the model started? Do you have specific questions? If so, please start a new post for each of those questions with your model attached. Please also reference our best practices.

If you are looking for a foundation on how to go about your model, I suggest checking out our manual which has several helpful tutorials. I also highly recommend Dr. Allen Greenwood’s FlexSim Primer, which was written specifically for students and professors. The answers forum is also a great place to search for topics and questions before you post your own.

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C avatar image C commented ·

Thank you for your guidance. I have not started the model yet but thinking about the design. I'll be checking the tutorials but I think what I'm trying to accomplish would need me to define many aspects of marine navigation and ship characteristics into the model from scratch, which is impossible by my skills. If there is a way to simplify this process, it would be great.

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Joerg Vogel avatar image Joerg Vogel C commented ·

This looks like a AGV system. The system consume electricity but that can you replace by volume of fuel, because there is not a direct link to an unit.

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C avatar image C Joerg Vogel commented ·

Thank you, I'll look into it.

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Jeanette F avatar image Jeanette F ♦♦ C commented ·

Like Joerg mentioned, an AGV system will probably be best for you. There are AGV tutorials. If you are curious how a specific command or aspect of AGV's work, explore the manual for definitions, explanations, and examples.

Break down what you are trying to do into step. Get a step working before moving forward. Models like this tend to be hard when you are trying to accomplish too much at once and you can't figure out what is not working. The steps you have defined above seem like a great way to go. Get step one working all the way before starting onto step two.

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