Allocating Freight Empty Cars in Railway Networks with Dynamic Demands

This paper investigates the freight empty cars allocation problem in railway networks with dynamic demands, in which the storage cost, unit transportation cost, and demand in each stage are taken into consideration. Under the constraints of capacity and demand, a stage-based optimization model for a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ce Zhao, Lixing Yang, Shukai Li
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2014-01-01
Series:Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/349341
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Summary:This paper investigates the freight empty cars allocation problem in railway networks with dynamic demands, in which the storage cost, unit transportation cost, and demand in each stage are taken into consideration. Under the constraints of capacity and demand, a stage-based optimization model for allocating freight empty cars in railway networks is formulated. The objective of this model is to minimize the total cost incurred by transferring and storing empty cars in different stages. Moreover, a genetic algorithm is designed to obtain the optimal empty cars distribution strategies in railway networks. Finally, numerical experiments are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm.
ISSN:1026-0226
1607-887X