An efficient and robust design optimisation of multi-state flow network for multiple commodities using generalised reliability evaluation algorithm and edge reduction method

作者：Chou Yu Cheng; Lin Po Ting^*

来源：International Journal of Systems Science, 2015, 46(14): 2659-2672.

DOI：10.1080/00207721.2013.879228

• reliability
• optimal routing
• edge reduction method
• commodity delivery
• multi-state flow network

The network of delivering commodities has been an important design problem in our daily lives and many transportation applications. The reliability of delivering commodities from a source node to a sink node in the network is maximised to find the optimal routing. However, the design problem is not simple due to randomly distributed attributes in each path, multiple commodities with variable path capacities and the allowable time constraints for delivery. This paper presents the design optimisation of the multi-state flow network (MSFN) for multiple commodities. We propose an efficient and robust approach to evaluate the system reliability in the MSFN with respect to randomly distributed path attributes and to find the optimal routing subject to the allowable time constraints. The delivery rates of the path segments are evaluated and the minimal-speed arcs are eliminated to reduce the complexity of the MSFN. Accordingly, the correct optimal routing is found and the worst-case reliability is evaluated. The reliability of the optimal routing is at least higher than worst-case measure. Three benchmark examples are utilised to demonstrate the proposed method. The comparisons between the original and the reduced networks show that the proposed method is very efficient.

• 出版日期2015-10-26