Concurrent Design: Coal Bulk Terminal Design Based On Integrated Simulation Methods
From Proceeding of Summer Computer Simulation Conference,SCSC95, Ottawa, July 24-26 1994
Roberto Mosca, Pietro Giribone, Agostino G.Bruzzone

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INTRODUCTION

Today, in the plant engineering field, correct designs must be generated along with technical-economic estimates not only to obtain criteria to evaluate the existing situation, but also to evaluate the impact of the design and management choices that take into account changing economic and time scenarios. The life-cycle of the plant must be correctly estimated and the design must make constant reference to reliable modeling that evaluates all these factors.
In the particular application proposed, the problem refers to the dimensioning of a port bulk terminal that will serve several power plants. Obviously, this service must be competitive and continuous even when external political economic conditions vary. In addition, it is inevitable that the plant will be subjected to wear that must be foreseen, already starting from the design phase, to correctly dimension the structures and to define the maintenance operations needed so that the plant remains technically competitive and economically profitable.
This study proposes a concurrent development method that is a mix of the traditional design and the construction of an ad hoc simulation model; in this way, it is easy to identify the weak points of the traditional design, to put the plant under stress by changing the exogenous conditions and to correctly define the scheduled maintenance and restructuring times needed to keep the terminal efficient. Up to now, concurrent engineering has been successful mainly in production applications, thus reducing design times and directing design efforts more precisely according to customer requirements.
To obtain these results it is indispensable to have integrated tools and to work in a coordinated manner, simulating what is designed before reaching the production phase. The method presented in this paper refers to plant engineering applications.
The life-cycle estimate in this work plays a fundamental role, i.e. the definition of various intermediate stages and the corresponding plant and operating restructuring activities, with the objective of guaranteeing an intelligent and efficient structure for the entire time horizon necessary to make the initial investment profitable as per the defined limits.
This application must be coordinated by designers, modelers and company management to correctly estimate the market situation, its trend and possible variations. The situation must also be modeled correctly and a plant must be designed to meet the operating requirements under all these conditions for the entire life cycle.