Intelligent Securing and Safety Assessment of Heavy and Oversized Cargo in Land and Sea Transport

Description: Patent No.: CN201810089140.9, CN201810089652.5, CN201810089151.7, CN201810089139.6.

Introduction： Heavy and oversized cargo has enormous dimensions, excessive weight, and complex structures, making its securing process challenging and risky. The securing system’s design, verification, implementation, and monitoring constitute critical processes and key technologies throughout transportation. The team has developed an engineering-based verification method for cargo securing, ensuring transport safety and efficiency while driving intelligent and integrated upgrades in supporting industries, including rigging, ports, and sensing.  Advantages and significance of the invention: 1) Considering the uncertain and complex engineering environment, we established a rigid-flexible coupled and nonlinear mechanical model of the ‘vehicle-cargo-lashing’ multi-body system to reveal damage-failure mechanisms and positive feedback evolution (Fig. 1). Using a swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, we solved the multi-parameter optimization problem, enabling automated and intelligent generation of securing solutions. This approach forms an integrated design and decision-making methodology for heavy and oversized cargo transport securing systems, overcoming conventional experience-dependent and simplified estimation methods to improve solution optimization and enhance securing reliability (Fig. 2). 2) An online monitoring and real-time safety assessment solution for heavy and oversized cargo transport securing systems is established (Fig. 3). By implementing digital twin technology, novel intelligent rigging and sensing technologies are developed, creating a reliability theory-based evaluation framework for assessing the effectiveness of securing components and safety margins. Based on historical operational data, this system enables real-time safety level prediction through digital twin simulation, offline learning, and self-correction capabilities. 3) An intelligent security, online monitoring, and safety assessment system was developed for land and sea transport of heavy and oversized cargo. The system integrates five key modules: intelligent design, digital twin, intelligent assessment, condition sensing, and iterative upgrading, while combining three core functions: solution design during the planning phase, monitoring/warning during the execution phase, and self-iterative upgrading post-transport. It enables multi-departmental collaborative communication and data transmission, dynamically coordinating module operations and allocating computing resources.  Application and Economic Benefits: The achievements include one published academic monograph, over 150 research papers, 30 authorized invention patents, and five registered software copyrights. The team has participated in developing 20 national standards (including four military standards). These technological innovations have been successfully deployed for multimodal transportation (rail/road/maritime) of heavy defense equipment, generating cumulative economic benefits exceeding 1 billion RMB while demonstrating strong potential for expanded applications (Fig. 4).

Organisation: Tianjin University

Innovator(s): Zunfeng Du, Haiming Zhu, Muxuan Han, Junling Wu, Jingbo Yang

Category: Transport and Logistics

Country: China