Metaheuristics in Combinatorial Optimization

The emergence of metaheuristics for solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems is one of the most notable achievements of the last two decades in operations research. This paper provides an account of the most recent developments in the field and identifies some common issues and trends. Examples of applications are also reported for vehicle routing and scheduling problems.     

A tabu search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with private fleet and common carrier

This paper describes a tabu search heuristic for a vehicle routing problem where the owner of a private fleet can either visit a customer with one of his vehicles or assign the customer to a common carrier. The owner’s objective is to minimize the variable and fixed costs for operating his fleet plus the total costs charged by the common carrier. The proposed tabu search is shown to outperform the best approach reported in the literature on 34 benchmark instances with a homogeneous fleet.     

N-(2-tetrahydrofuranyl)azole nucleoside analogs by reactions of azoles with dihalomethanes in tetrahydrofuran

The reactions of the mono-N-substituted bispyrazolylpyridine 2-(1-methyl-4,5,6,7-tetxahydroindazol-3-yl)-6-(2H-4,5,6,7-tetrahydroindazol-3-yl)pyridine, 3,5-dimethylpyrazole and benzimidazole with sodium hydride and diiodomethane or dibromomethane in tetrahydrofuran produced the unexpected N-tetrahydrofuran-2-yl adducts as well as the expected diazolylmethanes. These side-reactions are thought to involve the 2-halo tetrahydrofuran derivative resulting from a free-radical halogenation by the dihalomethane.     

Tabu Search for a Network Loading Problem with Multiple Facilities

This paper examines a network design problem that arises in the telecommunications industry. In this problem, communication between a gateway vertex and a number of demand vertices is achieved through a network of fiber optic cables. Since each cable has an associated capacity (bandwidth), enough capacity must be installed on the links of the network to satisfy the demand, using possibly different types of cables. Starting with a network with no capacity or some capacity already installed, a tabu search heuristic is designed to find a solution that minimizes the cost of installing any additional capacity on the network. This tabu search applies a k-shortest path algorithm to find alternative paths from the gateway to the demand vertices. Numerical results are presented on different types of networks with up to 200 vertices and 100 demand vertices.     

Automated pressurized injection system for the separation of actinides by extraction chromatography

This article describes a novel separation scheme developed for an automated system to efficiently separate actinides in individual fractions. The automated pressurized injection (PI) system developed allows precise collection of high-purity actinide fractions (≥99 %) at elevated flow rates (15–30 mL min^?1) using two extraction chromatographic TEVA and DGA resins. This system is sufficiently robust to enable the use of highly viscous acid media, limit acid corrosion, and tolerate large amount of gases generated by redox reactions by some of the reagents. The PI system was successfully applied to the separation of actinides in individual fractions (recovery yield ≥97 % for Th, U, Np, Pu, and Am) and shows the absence of cross contamination even with highly concentrated actinide solutions. The methodology was also applied to the measurement of actinides in large spiked soil samples.     

A tabu search heuristic using genetic diversification for the clustered traveling salesman problem

The clustered traveling salesman problem is an extension of the classical traveling salesman problem where the set of vertices is partitioned into clusters. The objective is to find a least cost Hamiltonian cycle such that the vertices of each cluster are visited contiguously and the clusters are visited in a prespecified order. A tabu search heuristic is proposed to solve this problem. This algorithm periodically restarts its search by merging two elite solutions to form a new starting solution (in a manner reminiscent of genetic algorithms). Computational results are reported on sets of Euclidean problems with different characteristics.     

A guide to vehicle routing heuristics

Several of the most important classical and modern heuristics for the vehicle routing problem are summarized and compared using four criteria: accuracy, speed, simplicity and flexibility. Computational results are reported.     

Scheduling a hot rolling mill

This paper presents a heuristic algorithm to schedule a hot rolling mill in the aluminum industry. One problematic issue is the tight coupling between the homogenizing furnaces and the mill, which needs to be integrated into the heuristic design. The latter also takes into account standard technological constraints like alloy hardness transitions, roll wear, homogenization code compatibilities and width transitions. The objective is to minimize the idle time on the mill and penalties for soft constraint violations related to production quality. The heuristic is divided into two phases. First, batches of ingots are constructed for the furnaces. These batches, called blocks, are then sequenced on the mill. Numerical results are reported on test instances derived from real-world data.     

Triggering and guiding of an upward positive leader from a ground rod with an ultrashort laser pulse. II. Modeling

We have used the Bondio-Gallimberti model of positive leader propagation to simulate laboratory experiments of laser triggering and guiding of upward leaders initiated from a ground rod. The model proves to be capable of reproducing all the important features of laser-guided leader propagation that have been observed experimentally. The leader guiding effect of the laser-created plasma channel is taken into account in the model by adjusting the value of the charge per unit length of the leader, which has been measured in the laboratory to be lower for a laser-guided leader than for an ordinary one. The charge per unit length of the leader is related in the model to the critical temperature at which the air in the transition region at the leader tip must be heated to be conductive enough to become a new leader portion. For an ordinary leader, this critical temperature is 1500 K, at which the electrons all detach from the negative ions in the leader corona, increasing the air conductivity. We give the interpretation that in the case of the laser-guided leaders, because of the relatively high density of negative ions per unit length in the laser-ionized channel, the right conditions of conductivity can be met in the transition region without the electrons being all detached from the ions, allowing a reduction of the critical temperature and of the charge per unit length.