Title: A particle swarm optimisation for time-dependent vehicle routing problem with an efficient travel time function

Authors: Seyedhamed Mousavipour; Seyed Mohammad Hossein Hojjati

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Isfahan, Iran; Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Isfahan, Iran; Department of Industrial Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz Branch, Shiraz, Iran

Abstract: Transportation plays an essential role in economic, service, and manufacturing systems. This fact has inspired a vast variety of researches to deal with different aspects of this problem. Vehicle routing problem is one of key issues in this field which has received much attention by researchers. Although there is a vast literature related to the VRP, few researches incorporate different traffic. In this paper, a mathematical model has been presented which considers variations in traffic flow based on an efficient travel time function. The proposed travel time function complies with the first-in, first-out (FIFO) assumption, which does not allow for surpassing. Because of the NP-hardness of the model, a particle swarm optimisation (PSO) method has been implemented and is compared to the mathematical model for small- and medium-sized instances. In addition, a set of large-sized instances have been taken into account in order to evaluate the applicability of the model in practical applications. Experimental results show the capability of the proposed PSO to find qualified solutions in reasonable computation time.

Keywords: vehicle routing problem; time dependent; travel time function; traffic load alteration; particle swarm optimisation; PSO; mathematical modelling; traffic flow.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2014.060518

International Journal of Operational Research, 2014 Vol.20 No.1, pp.109 - 120

Received: 06 Aug 2012
Accepted: 03 Dec 2012
Published online: 21 Jun 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article