THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 11, 1996 TAG: 9609110453
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD
STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: 85 lines
It's the question high-school math teachers love to hate and it goes something like this: ``How am I ever going to use this stuff?''
In this back-to-school month, millions of math students all over America are asking this question daily. Joseph H. Discenza and Robert H. Overton could supply a few answers.
They put numbers to work every day solving real-world problems that range from the ordinary to the exotic. In doing so, the two Ph.D. mathematicians rub shoulders with everybody from longshoremen to treasure hunters.
Discenza and Overton glad-handedly spent Tuesday busting myths about math's non-applicability. Their company, Daniel H. Wagner Associates, is among about 100 exhibitors at the second-annual Expotech showcase at the Hampton Coliseum.
Dozens of times, they told of how their math-based probability maps have helped modern-day treasure hunters find sunken galleons loaded with gold. And they explained how, by applying mathematics, they've figured the optimum way for crane operators to unload cargo containers from ships.
``A lot of problems are solvable that five years ago weren't because there wasn't computer power available,'' Overton explained.
The Malvern, Pa.-based Wagner Associates, which employs the duo in its Hampton office, has dived so deeply into the computerage that it even markets whole systems for underwater search-and-recovery missions. The hardware and software that comes with the company's Melian II Search System runs about $50,000.
But, Discenza said, with costs running in the tens of thousands of dollars a day for some elaborate search missions, the investment can quickly pay off.
About 15 people work for Wagner Associates in Hampton - including three others besides Discenza, the local manager, and Overton, a senior associate, who are Ph.D. mathematicians.
Maritime work occupies a lot of the local employees' time.
Discenza said math is quickly turning the business of treasure hunting from adventurous to analytical. The days of playing hunches are quickly fading as search teams deploy the theories that highly paid consultants like Discenza develop to help plot their hunt.
Instead of spending all or most of their time in one highly promising area, sonar-wielding searchers now cut back and forth across an entire grid - ``allocating the effort in each area according to the probability'' of a find. Global Positioning satellite systems are used to mark each potential underwater location to be revisited in the ever-narrowing probability-based search.
Making container cranes work faster has been a different problem altogether - but challenging just the same, Overton said. There, the main problem has been controlling the sway of containers as they are moved on and off ships. Every minute spent waiting for a container to stabilize in mid-air so it can be dropped into a slot on a ship or loaded onto a waiting truck trailer costs money - millions of dollars a year in a port like Hampton Roads.
Crane designers have tried different ways to beat sway. In some designs, the lifting cables have even been angled inward toward the center of the container rather than running straight up and down.
But Overton said his and his colleagues' work have shown that's not necessary. It just took changing the movement of the crane's trolley as it accelerates back and forth across a ship - basically the addition of another stop-and-go step along the way.
Good crane operators already used the technique, Overton said. He and his co-workers simply reduced it to an algorithm and then developed a system that, with the help of computers, controls acceleration and deceleration in order to keep sway to a minimum.
Now their recommendations are being incorporated in cranes throughout the port, Overton noted.
``The mathematics took care of it,'' he said.
MEMO: Expotech '96, sponsored mainly by the Peninsula Advanced
Technology Center, continues today from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the
Hampton Coliseum. Cost of the event, which is open to the public, is $35
per person at the door. Call 826-4674 for information. ILLUSTRATION: The problem
Controlling the sway of containers as they are moved on and off
ships.
The Solution
It took changing the movement of the crane's trolley as it
acclerates back and forth across a ship - basically the addition of
another stop-and-go step along the way. By reducing it to an
algorithm, a system was developed that, with the help of computers,
controls acceleration and deceleration in order to keep sway to a
minimum. by CNB