Modelling and Metaheuristic for Gantry Crane Scheduling and Storage Space Allocation Problem in Railway Container Terminals

The gantry crane scheduling and storage space allocation problem in the main containers yard of railway container terminal is studied. A mixed integer programming model which comprehensively considers the handling procedures, noncrossing constraints, the safety margin and traveling time of gantry cr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ming Zeng, Wenming Cheng, Peng Guo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2017-01-01
Series:Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2017/9025482
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Summary:The gantry crane scheduling and storage space allocation problem in the main containers yard of railway container terminal is studied. A mixed integer programming model which comprehensively considers the handling procedures, noncrossing constraints, the safety margin and traveling time of gantry cranes, and the storage modes in the main area is formulated. A metaheuristic named backtracking search algorithm (BSA) is then improved to solve this intractable problem. A series of computational experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm under some randomly generated cases based on the practical operation conditions. The results show that the proposed algorithm can gain the near-optimal solutions within a reasonable computation time.
ISSN:1026-0226
1607-887X