3 Presentations

• 
  04:30 PM - 05:00 PM

  Automatic Cargo Load Planning: Special Shipments

  • Thomas Kleyntssens, HEC-ULg
  • Sabine Limbourg, presenter, HEC-ULg
  • Michael Schyns, HEC-ULg

  The aircraft loading problem is a real-world combinatorial optimisation problem highly constrained. Indeed, loading the aircraft so the gross weight is less than the maximum allowable is not enough. This weight must be distributed to keep the centre of gravity within specified limits. Moreover, an aircraft has usually several cargo compartments with specific contours and structural limitations such as floor loading, combined load limits and cumulative load limitations. Finally, some shipments are particularly restrictive to transport, like dangerous goods, live animals and perishable goods. This paper is concerned with the incorporation of these latter constraints in a mixed integer linear program for the problem of loading a set of Unit Loading Devices and bulk into an aircraft. Experimental results show that our method achieves optimal solutions within only few seconds.

• 
  05:00 PM - 05:30 PM

  Three Dimensional Bin Packing Problem Applied to Air Cargo

  • Célia Paquay, presenter, HEC-ULg
  • Michael Schyns, HEC-ULg
  • Sabine Limbourg, HEC-ULg

  Deciding whether a set of three dimensional boxes can be packed into a container is a NP-hard problem. Mathematical models have been developed, however, only few studies take into account constraints encountered in real-world applications such as the stability or the fragility of the cargo. Moreover, despite the importance of this issue in air transport, the literature is almost silent on constraints related to the distribution of the weight inside a container. This paper is concerned with the formulation of the three dimensional palletization which includes the main constraints met in the air cargo industry.

• 
  05:30 PM - 06:00 PM

  Container Safety Storage on a Port Terminal

  • Mansoriya Hamidou Hadj-Slimane, presenter, Laboratoire LITIS, Université du Havre
  • Dominique Fournier, Université du Havre
  • Éric Sanlaville, Université du Havre
  • Frédéric Serin, Université du Havre

  A container terminal is a complex and dynamic system. Many operations occur within the storage area: containers import, containers export and containers shifting. All these operations require the respect of many rules and even laws in order to guarantee the port safety and to prevent risks, especially for the hazardous material storage. This paper proposes an hybrid architecture, using a Multi-Agent System and a Cellular Automaton, to handle the hazardous container storage problem. It is an optimization problem since the aim is to improve the container terminal configuration, that is, the way hazardous containers are dispatched through the terminal. Simple optimization heuristic methods were tested on a terminal with four hazardous container types. We consider then containers as agents, in order to use a Multi-Agent System for the decision aid software, and a Cellular Automaton for modelling the terminal itself. This approach will improve the naive methods first implemented, and should apply to the actual data and constraints of container terminal management.