by Guest » Sat Jul 22, 2006 2:01 am
I don't understand the packing vs size in quote number 2. Sticking to the 1st,
You need to know how big a 20' container is on the inside. That depends on the manufacturer. They are close, but not all exactly the same. Two sources claimed:
#1: 5.87 m long x 2.33 m wide x 2.35 m high
#2: 5.919 m L x 2.340 m W x 2.380 m H
You have to figure the best way to pack rows, columns, layers of your boxes into that space. You may have to try different arrangements to find the one that holds the most.
Lets consider the first container, and write dimensions in cm to be the same as the boxes, 587 cm x 233 cm x 235 cm.
If the 57 cm dimension must be oriented vertically, you can only stack 4 high, 4*57 = 228 cm, and 7 cm of height is unusable. Since the other two dimensions are both 52 cm, there are no alternatives in how to arrange, and you can pack four across, 11 down the length of the container, using 208 cm of available 233 cm width, and 572 cm of available 587 cm length. You have 4x4x11 = 176 boxes. I guess that would be 1760 pieces.
You can try other arrangements of the boxes and try to beat that number. There is no foolproof way to find optimum, just trial and error. Here there are probably no alternatives.
As a check you can compute interior volume of container = 32.14 m^ and the volume of one of the boxes, 0.154 m^3
If you could perfectly use all the space (you can't), 208 boxes could fit. We only got 176 boxes to fit given actual dimensions and wasted space. The key question is whether any other pack wastes less space, and how close to the theoretical can you get.