An Upgraded Sine Cosine Algorithm for Tower Crane Selection and Layout Problem

Tower crane is the core construction facility in the high-rise building construction sites. Proper selection and location of construction tower cranes not only can affect the expenses but also it can have impact on the material handling process of building construction. Tower crane selection and layout problem (TCSLP) is a type of construction site layout problem, which is considered as an NP-hard problem. In consequence, researchers have extensively used metaheuristics for their solution. The Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA) is a newly developed metaheuristic which performs well for TCSLP, however, efficient use of this algorithm requires additional considerations. For this purpose, the present paper studies an upgraded sine cosine algorithm (USCA) that employs a harmony search based operator to improve the exploration and deal with variable constraints simultaneously and uses an archive to save the best solutions. Subsequently, the upgraded sine cosine algorithm is employed to optimize the locations to find the best tower crane layout. Several benchmark functions are studied to evaluate the performance of the USCA. A comparative study indicates that the USCA performs quite well in comparison to other recently developed metaheuristic algorithms

Optimization of Tower Crane Location and Material Quantity Between Supply and Demand Points: A Comparative Study

Location optimization of tower crane as an expensive equipment in the construction projects has an important effect on material transportation costs. Due to the construction site conditions, there are several tower crane location optimization models. Appropriate location of tower cranes for material supply and engineering demands is a combinatorial optimization problem within the tower crane layout problem that is difficult to resolve.  Meta-heuristics are popular and useful techniques to resolve complex optimization problems. In this paper, the performance of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and four newly developed meta-heuristic algorithms Colliding Bodies Optimization (CBO), Enhanced Colliding Bodies Optimization (ECBO), Vibrating Particles System (VPS), and Enhanced Vibrating Particles System (EVPS) are compared in terms of their effectiveness in resolving a practical Tower Crane Layout (TCL) problem. Results show that ECBO performs better than other three methods in both cases