An Advanced Tabu Search Approach to Solving the Mixed Payload Airlift Load Planning Problem

This paper presents a new tabu search based two-dimensional bin packing algorithm which produces high quality solutions to the Mixed Payload Airlift Load Planning (MPALP) problem using C-5 and C-17 aircraft. This algorithm, called Mixed Payload Airlift Load Planning Tabu Search (MPALPTS), surpasses previous research conducted in this area because, in addition to pure pallet cargo loads, MPALPTS can accommodate rolling stock cargo (i.e. tanks, trucks, HMMMVs, etc.) while still maintaining aircraft feasibility with respect to aircraft center of balance, mandatory cargo separations, aircraft floor structural limitations, etc. Furthermore, while this research is currently restricted to C-5 and C-17 aircraft, MPALPTS is capable of modeling nearly any type of cargo aircraft and requires a limited number of assumptions thereby making it applicable to operational missions. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the load plans generated by MPALPTS are directly compared to those generated by the Automated Air Load Planning Software (AALPS) for a given cargo set; AALPS is the load planning software currently mandated for use in all Department of Defense load planning. While more time consuming than AALPS, MPALPTS required the same or fewer aircraft than AALPS in all test scenario

Enterprise Analysis of Strategic Airlift to Obtain Competitive Advantage through Fuel Efficiency

The rising cost of fuel has led to increasing emphasis on fuel efficiency in the aviation industry. As fuel costs become a larger proportion of total costs, those entities with a dynamic capability to increase their fuel efficiency will obtain competitive advantage. Assessing cargo throughput and fuel efficiency requires the creation of all routes of potential value for a given set of requirements that need to be airlifted from source to destination airfield. The time required for route computation can be significantly reduced through the use of nodal reduction. Use of the proposed model can assist evaluation of enterprise wide efficiency and effectiveness

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2010

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physic

Vehicle routing problems with drones equipped with multi-package payload compartments

The vehicle routing problem with drones (VRP-D) consists of designing combined truck-drone routes and schedules to serve a set of customers with specific requests and time constraints. In this paper, VRP-D is extended to include a fleet of drones equipped with multi-package payload compartments to serve more customers on a single trip. Moreover, a drone can return to a truck, different from the one from which it started, to swap its depleted battery and/or to pick up more packages. This problem, denoted as VRP-D equipped with multi-package payload compartments (VRP-D-MC), aims to maximize total profit. In this work, an adaptive multi-start simulated annealing (AMS-SA) metaheuristic algorithm is proposed to efficiently solve this problem. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the current state-of-the-art algorithms for VRP-D in terms of solution quality. Extensive analyses have been conducted to provide managerial insights. The analyses carried out show (i) the benefits of using drones equipped with different compartment configurations, (ii) the incremental total profit obtainable using a combined truck-drone fleet rather than a fleet of trucks, (iii) the benefit of swapping drone battery while picking up the items to deliver, and (iv) the impact of the packages load on the consumption energy of battery drone. It is also demonstrated that the different intensification and diversification mechanisms adopted improve the convergence of the traditional SA

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2000

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2009

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2004

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2001

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2007

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2006

This report summarizes the research activities of the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. It describes research interests and faculty expertise; lists student theses/dissertations; identifies research sponsors and contributions; and outlines the procedures for contacting the school. Included in the report are: faculty publications, conference presentations, consultations, and funded research projects. Research was conducted in the areas of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Electro-Optics, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Systems and Engineering Management, Operational Sciences, Mathematics, Statistics and Engineering Physics