Solving a hub covering location problem under capacity constraints by a hybrid algorithm

The hub location problem appears in a variety of applications including airline systems, cargo delivery systems, and telecommunication network design. When we analyze an application separately, we observe that each area has its own characteristics. Hub location problems deal with finding the location of hub facilities and with the allocation of demand nodes to these located hub facilities. This paper considers the single-allocation hub covering problem under capacity constraints, namely Capacitated Single Allocation Hub Covering Location Problem (CSAHCLP) over the complete hub networks. Furthermore, this paper presents a mixed-integer programming model that aims at finding the location of hubs and the allocation of non-hub nodes to the located hub nodes such that the travel cost between any origin–destination pair is within the given cost bound, in which hubs are considered in a limited capacity. To solve such a problem, a hybrid algorithm, based on a genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing (SA), is proposed. The related results obtained by three foregoing approaches are compares. After this comparison, it is concluded that the hybrid algorithm gives better results in comparison with GA and SA.