This contribution presents a specific objective function referring to sustainability within vehicle routing and it proposes an extension of "green" vehicle routing problems by introducing an inhomogeneous fleet. For the basic problem it is assumed that the amount of CO2 emission depends on the distances to be travelled and on the degree to which the used vehicles are loaded. The goal of minimizing the total travel distance is contrasted with the goal of minimizing the total amount of emission. The basic problem is extended by the availability of various types of vehicles with different capacities and specific fuel consumption. This work includes a mathematical formulation of the extended problem and a small instance that illustrates the problem. Computational experiments for the basic and the extended problem formulation are performed by using CPLEX. The results of the computational experiments show that it is worth to solve the EVRP additionally to the VRP and to contrast these two approaches and the solutions generated by them. Introducing heterogeneous fleets of vehicles with different capacities and fuel consumption opens up a tremendous potential for saving CO2 emissions. Solutions of the EVRP-VC show that this potential can reach a reduction of 20 % and even more. The price to be paid for this reduction is that the total travel distances as well as the number of used vehicles increase drastically. For balancing the aforementioned benefits and drawbacks, an extended model with an integrated cost function considering fuel consumption, travel distances and fixed costs of the vehicles will be developed. For a continued analysis of the relations among the VRP, EVRP and EVRP-VC, it is necessary to expand the above experiments. On the one hand, several characteristic scenarios represented by sensibly configured large sets of problem instances have to be defined and analyzed. On the other hand, powerful heuristics are needed to enable the solution of the relevant optimization models for typical medium sized and large sized problem instances. Finally, in successive research, conclusions for the configuration of vehicle fleets can be derived.


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    Title :

    Emissions minimization vehicle routing problem in dependence of different vehicle classes


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2013


    Size :

    10 Seiten, 2 Bilder, 6 Tabellen, 11 Quellen





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English