Optimizing operation of delivering and fetching wagons at a railway station with mixed-shaped goods operation sites

PLoS One. 2022 Jan 31;17(1):e0263029. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263029. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

The problem of delivering and fetching wagons at a railway station with mixed-shaped goods operation sites is considered, with a view to minimizing the running time between goods operation sites and waiting time of the locomotive in the planning period as the optimization objective. A general mathematical model for delivering and fetching wagons at a railway station with mixed-shaped goods operation sites has been formulated. The methods of judging and processing reverse of delivering and fetching wagons, dividing batches, and judging number of wagons for batch operation are provided to determine the feasibility of the solution, and an improved simulated annealing algorithm is introduced as our algorithm to the model. Finally, an experimental station is taken as an example to verify the model and algorithm. The results show that simulated annealing algorithm is relatively superior in computational efficiency and result compared with genetic algorithm and tabu search algorithm, the computing time of the algorithm provided can meet the requirements of planning shunting operations in railway station, and the model proposed is universal for other layout forms of GOSs and different operation forms.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Railroads*

Grants and funding

The study was supported by the Initiation Project of Introducing Talents for Scientific Research of CUIT [Grant no. KYTZ 201910]. The funders played role in role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.