The United States Marine Corps (USMC) currently operates a fleet of KC130 aerial refueling tanker aircraft. This paper uses queuing and simulation models to examine the USMC KC130 tanker requirement, contrasts the results and explores the budgetary implications of alternative fleet requirements. This analysis finds that queuing models don’t account for some of the complexities of aerial refueli...

An important barrier towards the introduction of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) running on hydrogen is the lack of widespread refueling infrastructure. The niche of buses for public transport, taxis and deliverers with a local application area might not be large enough to generate the reductions of FCV costs that are necessary for a general technology switch. Thus, fuel availability at trunk roads p...

Due to global concerns about environmental sustainability in ground logistics, there has been widespread research into alternative-fuel (alt-fuel) vehicles. Compressed natural gas buses have been successfully deployed on a commercial scale in public transportation. Also, sales for electric cars have been gradually increasing. However, uses of other alt-fuel vehicles are in their early stages be...

Managing shipping vessel profitability is a central problem in marine transportation. We consider two commonly used types of vessels—“liners” (ships whose routes are fixed in advance) and “trampers” (ships for which future route components are selected based on available shipping jobs)—and formulate a vessel profit maximization problem as a stochastic dynamic program. For liner vessels, the pro...

Historically, gasoline and diesel fuels have been used for transportation, but the possible decline of oil supplies in the future is forcing nations to consider alternative fuels. Most technically and economically feasible alternative fuels have a lower energy density than gasoline, which results in a shorter range for these vehicles. This necessitates a greater need for convenient access to re...

During their fall migration from the Arctic to South America, semipalmated sandpipers Calidris pusilla stop in the Bay of Fundy (east coast of Canada) before flying non-stop for approximately 4500 km across the ocean. Refueling birds double their body mass by feeding on Corophium volutator, an amphipod containing high amounts of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA), particularly eicosapen...

| This paper deals with the application of evolutionary algorithms to refueling of pressurized water reactors. We describe the optimization problem in detail and derive an appropriate goal function for the problem. After characterizing how the designers tackle this problem today we apply an evolutionary algorithm to nd promising solutions. Due of the discrete nature of the problem a special evo...

The purpose of this paper is to provide an expected cost comparison for operating a transit-bus fleet on three different alternative fuels-biodiesel, compressed natural gas (CNG), and methanol. Petroleum diesel is the base fuel. Infrastructure, refueling, and maintenance costs are all part of running an urban transit bus. Additional expenditures would be needed to change fuel storage and delive...

Planning the transition period for the adoption of alternative fuel-technology powertrains is a challenging task that requires sophisticated analysis tools. In this study, a system dynamic approach was applied to analyze the bi-directional interaction between the development of the refueling station network and vehicle sales. Besides, the developed model was used to estimate the transition cost...