scholarly journals A CEGA-Based Optimization Approach for Integrated Designing of a Unidirectional Guide-Path Network and Scheduling of AGVs

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Haining Xiao ◽  
Xing Wu ◽  
Yong Zeng ◽  
Jingjing Zhai

In the current industrial fields, automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) are widely employed to constitute the flexible manufacturing system (FMS), owing to their great advantages of routing flexibility and high efficiency. However, one main challenge lies in the coupling process of the design problem of the unidirectional guide-path network (UGN) and the task scheduling problem of AGVs. To reduce the complexity, most pertinent literatures only handle these problems one by one, based on the stepwise design methods, thereby neglecting the constraint conditions and the optimization objectives caused by the FMS environment. The motivation of the paper is to bring the coupling factors into the integrated design and solution process. Firstly, an integrated design model of designing UGN and scheduling AGVs simultaneously is proposed, with the objective of minimizing the makespan (i.e., the maximum completion time of all handling tasks), in the consideration of the practical constraints, e.g., the job handling and processing sequence constraints and the AGV number constraint. Secondly, a dual-population collaborative evolutionary genetic algorithm (CEGA) is developed to solve the problems of designing and scheduling in a parallel way. The solutions of the integrated model, i.e., the potential strongly connected UGN and the feasible processing and handling sequence, are, respectively, coded as two different subpopulations with independent and concurrent evolution processes. The neighbourhood search operation, the niche technique, and the elitism strategy are combined to improve the convergence speed and maintain the population diversity. The experimental results show that the integrated design model can formulate the problem more accurately, and the CEGA algorithm is computationally efficient with high solution quality.

Author(s):  
J. Schiffmann

Small scale turbomachines in domestic heat pumps reach high efficiency and provide oil-free solutions which improve heat-exchanger performance and offer major advantages in the design of advanced thermodynamic cycles. An appropriate turbocompressor for domestic air based heat pumps requires the ability to operate on a wide range of inlet pressure, pressure ratios and mass flows, confronting the designer with the necessity to compromise between range and efficiency. Further the design of small-scale direct driven turbomachines is a complex and interdisciplinary task. Textbook design procedures propose to split such systems into subcomponents and to design and optimize each element individually. This common procedure, however, tends to neglect the interactions between the different components leading to suboptimal solutions. The authors propose an approach based on the integrated philosophy for designing and optimizing gas bearing supported, direct driven turbocompressors for applications with challenging requirements with regards to operation range and efficiency. Using previously validated reduced order models for the different components an integrated model of the compressor is implemented and the optimum system found via multi-objective optimization. It is shown that compared to standard design procedure the integrated approach yields an increase of the seasonal compressor efficiency of more than 12 points. Further a design optimization based sensitivity analysis allows to investigate the influence of design constraints determined prior to optimization such as impeller surface roughness, rotor material and impeller force. A relaxation of these constrains yields additional room for improvement. Reduced impeller force improves efficiency due to a smaller thrust bearing mainly, whereas a lighter rotor material improves rotordynamic performance. A hydraulically smoother impeller surface improves the overall efficiency considerably by reducing aerodynamic losses. A combination of the relaxation of the 3 design constraints yields an additional improvement of 6 points compared to the original optimization process. The integrated design and optimization procedure implemented in the case of a complex design problem thus clearly shows its advantages compared to traditional design methods by allowing a truly exhaustive search for optimum solutions throughout the complete design space. It can be used for both design optimization and for design analysis.


Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Xiang Meng ◽  
Ying Huang ◽  
Soroosh Mahmoodi

AbstractMultiobjective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm faces the difficulty of prematurity and insufficient diversity due to the selection of inappropriate leaders and inefficient evolution strategies. Therefore, to circumvent the rapid loss of population diversity and premature convergence in MOPSO, this paper proposes a knowledge-guided multiobjective particle swarm optimization using fusion learning strategies (KGMOPSO), in which an improved leadership selection strategy based on knowledge utilization is presented to select the appropriate global leader for improving the convergence ability of the algorithm. Furthermore, the similarity between different individuals is dynamically measured to detect the diversity of the current population, and a diversity-enhanced learning strategy is proposed to prevent the rapid loss of population diversity. Additionally, a maximum and minimum crowding distance strategy is employed to obtain excellent nondominated solutions. The proposed KGMOPSO algorithm is evaluated by comparisons with the existing state-of-the-art multiobjective optimization algorithms on the ZDT and DTLZ test instances. Experimental results illustrate that KGMOPSO is superior to other multiobjective algorithms with regard to solution quality and diversity maintenance.


Author(s):  
Matthias Grot ◽  
Tristan Becker ◽  
Pia Mareike Steenweg ◽  
Brigitte Werners

AbstractIn order to allocate limited resources in emergency medical services (EMS) networks, mathematical models are used to select sites and their capacities. Many existing standard models are based on simplifying assumptions, including site independency and a similar system-wide busyness of ambulances. In practice, when a site is busy, a call is forwarded to another site. Thus, the busyness of each site depends not only on the rate of calls in the surrounding area, but also on interactions with other facilities. If the demand varies across the urban area, assuming an average system-wide server busy fraction may lead to an overestimation of the actual coverage. We show that site interdependencies can be integrated into the well-known Maximum Expected Covering Location Problem (MEXCLP) by introducing an upper bound for the busyness of each site. We apply our new mathematical formulation to the case of a local EMS provider. To evaluate the solution quality, we use a discrete event simulation based on anonymized real-world call data. Results of our simulation-optimization approach indicate that the coverage can be improved in most cases by taking site interdependencies into account, leading to an improved ambulance allocation and a faster emergency care.


2012 ◽  
Vol 197 ◽  
pp. 529-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Ping Luo

For vehicle routing problem, its model is easy to state and difficult to solve. The shuffled frog leaping algorithm is a novel meta-heuristic optimization approach and has strong quickly optimal searching power. The paper applies herein this algorithm to solve the vehicle routing problem; presents a high-efficiency encoding method based on the nearest neighborhood list; improves evolution strategies of the algorithm in order to keep excellent characteristics of the best frog. This proposed algorithm provides a new idea for solving VRP.


Author(s):  
Victor Oduguwa ◽  
Rajkumar Roy ◽  
Didier Farrugia

Most of the algorithmic engineering design optimisation approaches reported in the literature aims to find the best set of solutions within a quantitative (QT) search space of the given problem while ignoring related qualitative (QL) issues. These QL issues can be very important and by ignoring them in the optimisation search, can have expensive consequences especially for real world problems. This paper presents a new integrated design optimisation approach for QT and QL search space. The proposed solution approach is based on design of experiment methods and fuzzy logic principles for building the required QL models, and evolutionary multi-objective optimisation technique for solving the design problem. The proposed technique was applied to a two objectives rod rolling problem. The results obtained demonstrate that the proposed solution approach can be used to solve real world problems taking into account the related QL evaluation of the design problem.


Author(s):  
Jiarui Zhou ◽  
Junshan Yang ◽  
Ling Lin ◽  
Zexuan Zhu ◽  
Zhen Ji

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a swarm intelligence algorithm well known for its simplicity and high efficiency on various problems. Conventional PSO suffers from premature convergence due to the rapid convergence speed and lack of population diversity. It is easy to get trapped in local optima. For this reason, improvements are made to detect stagnation during the optimization and reactivate the swarm to search towards the global optimum. This chapter imposes the reflecting bound-handling scheme and von Neumann topology on PSO to increase the population diversity. A novel crown jewel defense (CJD) strategy is introduced to restart the swarm when it is trapped in a local optimum region. The resultant algorithm named LCJDPSO-rfl is tested on a group of unimodal and multimodal benchmark functions with rotation and shifting. Experimental results suggest that the LCJDPSO-rfl outperforms state-of-the-art PSO variants on most of the functions.


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