Fleet configuration subject to stochastic demand: an application in the distribution of liquefied petroleum gas

We study the problem of configuring a fleet, in which vehicles receive information on-line about the demand that they should fulfil while they are on the road. In each district it must be decided the number of vehicles and their capacity. The objective function is to minimise the operational cost subject to constraints for the minimum delivery capacity, the maximum vehicle size and the average waiting time for customers. The last constraint is modelled as a queuing system that is adjusted according to the simulation of the delivery process of a Chilean company that distributes liquefied petroleum gas in portable cylinders. We provide the analytical form of all the components of the model, so it can be solved using a standard non-linear programming package. We show that the fleet may increase its sales by 3% and reduce the waiting time of customers 10% by allowing a set of vehicles to share the buffer of orders rather than having vehicles to exclusively serve smaller sectors.     

Ab Initio Study on the Isomerization and Dehydrogenation of Methylnitrene

The ab initio calculations were performed at the RHF/4-31G level with the reaction pathways of the iso-merization and dehydrogenation of methylnitrene by the intrinsic reaction coordinate method. The results show that the transformation from methylnitrene to methylenimine would be very easy. This accountes for the experimental fact that one couldn' t find the methylnitrene, but only obtained the methylenimine in the pyrolysis of methyl azide. The mode-selective study reveals the reaction coordinates (IRC) of isomerization and dehydrogenation of methylnitrene are associated with the molecular deformation mode of 1191 cm-1 and the methyl group unsymmetrical stretch mode, respectively. The coupling between normal coordinates is favourable to select the reaction channel of isomerization.     

Multiporous hollow polymer particles

Hollow particles with interconnected cavities have been prepared by a simple modified suspension polymerization of acrylate monomers in the incorporation of a phase inversion process and polymerizable emulsifier. The morphology of particles has been characterized by scanning electron micrographs (SEMs). Based on observations made using an optical microscope equipped with a digital camera and SEM images of particles obtained under different conditions, the formation mechanisms for multiporous hollow particles are discussed.     

Scheduling multi-stage parallel-processor services to minimize average response time

The problem of scheduling on a multi-stage parallel-processor architecture in computer centres is addressed with the objective of minimizing average completion time of a set of requests. The problem is modelled as a flexible flowshop problem for which few heuristics exist in the flowshop scheduling literature. A new three-phase heuristic is proposed in this paper. An extensive computational experiment has been conducted to compare the performance of the existing heuristics and the proposed heuristic. The results indicate that the proposed heuristic significantly outperforms the existing ones. More specifically, the overall average error of the best existing heuristic is about five times that of the proposed heuristic while the overall average CPU time of the proposed heuristic is about half of the best existing one. More importantly, as the number of requests increases, the CPU time of the proposed heuristic decreases considerably (compared to the best existing heuristic) while the ratio of the error (of the best existing to the proposed heuristic) of about five times remains almost the same.     

An inverse radiative transfer problem of simultaneously estimating profiles of temperature and radiative parameters from boundary intensity and temperature measurements

A parallel-plane space filled with absorbing, emitting, isotropically scattering, gray medium is studied in this paper. The boundary intensity and boundary temperature profiles are calculated for the inverse analysis. For the simultaneous estimation of temperature, absorption and scattering coefficient profiles in the medium, the sum of residuals of boundary intensity and temperature after being weighted by a balance factor is minimized through using a Newton-type iteration algorithm and the least-squares method. To avoid over-updating for the parameters, the relative updating magnitude during the iteration process is constrained not to be >0.5. It is shown that the boundary intensity measurement alone is not enough to estimate simultaneously the temperature (source) and the radiative properties (both absorption and scattering coefficients) when the measurement data contain sensitive random errors. The boundary temperature measurement can serve as a necessary supplementation to the boundary intensity to make this kind of inverse radiative transfer problem resolvable. It was shown that a compensation relationship between absorption and scattering coefficients makes it difficult to fix them accurately. Parabolic profiles for the three parameters are used to validate the estimation method. When the optical thickness approaches 4.0, the results for the radiative properties are not acceptable, although the result for temperature profile is reasonable. This means the method needs further improvements.     

A Lagrangean heuristic algorithm for disassembly scheduling with capacity constraints

This paper considers the problem of determining the disassembly schedule (quantity and timing) of products in order to satisfy the demand of their parts or components over a finite planning horizon. The objective is to minimize the sum of set-up, disassembly operation, and inventory holding costs. As an extension of the uncapacitated versions of the problem, we consider the resource capacity restrictions over the planning horizon. An integer program is suggested to describe the problem mathematically, and to solve the problem, a heuristic is developed using a Lagrangean relaxation technique together with a method to find a good feasible solution while considering the trade-offs among different costs. The effectiveness of the algorithm is tested on a number of randomly generated problems and the test results show that the heuristic suggested in this paper can give near optimal solutions within a short amount of computation time.     

Mappings of finite distortion: Hausdorff measure of zero sets

We prove that a for a mapping f of finite distortion , the -Hausdorff measure of any point preimage is zero provided is integrable, with , and the multiplicity function of f is essentially bounded. As a consequence for we obtain that the mapping is then open and discrete. Received: 18 June 2001 / Revised version: 31 January 2002 / Published online: 27 June 2002     

Local ν-Euler Derivations and Deligne's¶Characteristic Class of Fedosov Star Products¶and Star Products of Special Type

In this paper we explicitly construct local ν-Euler derivations , where the ξ_α are local, conformally symplectic vector fields and the are formal series of locally defined differential operators, for Fedosov star products on a symplectic manifold (M,ω) by means of which we are able to compute Deligne's characteristic class of these star products. We show that this class is given by , where is a formal series of closed two-forms on M the cohomology class of which coincides with the one introduced by Fedosov to classify his star products. Moreover, we consider star products that have additional algebraic structures and compute the effect of these structures on the corresponding characteristic classes of these star products. Specifying the constituents of Fedosov's construction we obtain star products with these special properties. Finally, we investigate equivalence transformations between such special star products and prove existence of equivalence transformations being compatible with the considered algebraic structures. Dedicated to the memory of Moshé Flato Received: 28 June 1999 / Accepted: 11 April 2002?Published online: 11 September 2002     

Local search algorithms for the min-max loop layout problem

In the min-max loop layout problem, machines are to be arranged around a loop of conveyor belt. The ordering of the machines dictates the number of circuits of the conveyor belt required to manufacture each of several products. The goal is to find an ordering of the machines that minimises the maximum number of circuits required for the manufacture of any of the products. Since the problem is strongly NP-hard, the study of heuristic methods is of interest. This paper proposes iterated descent and tabu search algorithms, and a randomised insertion algorithm. Results of extensive computational tests show that all of our algorithms outperform a previously known algorithm that applies a greedy heuristic to the solution of a linear programming relaxation. The best quality solutions are obtained with iterated descent. This adds further evidence to the belief that iterated descent can produce high quality solutions to a variety of combinatorial optimisation problems. Moreover, unlike some other local search algorithms, iterated descent does not require much tuning in order to be competitive.