A MILP Model and a GRASP Algorithm for the Helicopter Routing Problem with Multi-Trips and Time Windows

Machado, André Manhães; Mauri, Geraldo Regis; Bóeres, Maria Claudia Silva; Rosa, Rodrigo de Alvarenga

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-31140-7_13

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…This is a valid assumption as fixed-wing assets generally land at airports with refueling services. An additional DARP refueling method is to assume refueling is available only at the depot (Machado et al, 2019) which results in each vehicle's route consisting of several trips with periodic refueling at the depot. The model in this paper considers a more realistic setting encountered by Army aviation helicopters, in which there is a limited number of HLZs with refueling capabilities.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

US Army Aviation air movement operations assignment, utilization and routing

Nelson

King

McConnell

et al. 2023

JDAL

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PurposeThe purpose of this study was to create an air movement operations planning model to rapidly generate air mission request (AMR) assignment and routing courses of action (COA) in order to minimize unsupported AMRs, aircraft utilization and routing cost.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, the US Army Aviation air movement operations planning problem is modeled as a mixed integer linear program (MILP) as an extension of the dial-a-ride problem (DARP). The paper also introduces a heuristic as an extension of a single-vehicle DARP demand insertion algorithm to generate feasible solutions in a tactically useful time period.FindingsThe MILP model generates optimal solutions for small problems (low numbers of AMRs and small helicopter fleets). The heuristic generates near-optimal feasible solutions for problems of various sizes (up to 100 AMRs and 10 helicopter team fleet size) in near real time.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the inability of the MILP to produce optimal solutions for mid- and large-sized problems, this research is limited in commenting on the heuristic solution quality beyond the numerical experimentation. Additionally, the authors make several simplifying assumptions to generalize the average performance and capabilities of aircraft throughout a flight.Originality/valueThis research is the first to solve the US Army Aviation air movement operations planning problem via a single formulation that incorporates multiple refuel nodes, minimization of unsupported demand by priority level, demand time windows, aircraft team utilization penalties, aircraft team time windows and maximum duration and passenger ride time limits.

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