Truck routing cut and fill problem in roadworks using integer programming

Abstract

Planning activities of materials distribution in earthworks may represent a gain in the work as a whole. One way to savings in the construction is to minimize the total distance travelled by equipment, for example the trucks between the cut and fill in earthmoving areas. Some studies have been reported on the optimization of material distribution between cut and fill areas, but only a few were applied in real projects considering multiple trucks, moreover they do not do any analysis based on the distance between stations. This paper aims at presenting an integer programming model that minimizes the distance travelled by dump trucks in distribution activities of earthwork materials. The developed model was based on a classical operational research problem named vehicle routing problem, which focus on the minimization of the travelled way by a fleet of vehicles. The proposed approach was applied in two case studies whose findings highlight significant gains, in terms of flexibility of the planning process. Engineers, planners and analysts have an important computational tool to support decision-making by using this model.

Keywords

• Earthmoving
• Vehicle
• Routing Problem
• Mathematical Programming.