in today's globalization, an effective integration of production and distribution plans into a unified framework is crucial for attaining competitive advantage. this paper addresses an integrated multi-product and multi-time period production/distribution planning problem for a two-echelon supply chain subject to the real-world variables and constraints. it is assumed that all transportations a...

in static scheduling problem, where there is no change in situation, the challenge is that the large problems can be solved in a short time. in this paper, the static scheduling problem of automated guided vehicles in container terminal is solved by the network simplex algorithm (nsa). the algorithm is based on graph model and their performances are at least 100 times faster than traditional si...

Structural  design  optimization  usually  deals  with  multiple  conflicting  objectives  to  obtain the minimum construction cost, minimum weight, and maximum safety of the final design. Therefore, finding the optimum design is hard and time-consuming for  such problems.  In this paper, we borrow the basic concept of multi-criterion decision-making and combine it with  Particle  Swarm  Optimi...

One of the most important factors that affects construction costs of highways is the earthwork cost. On the other hand, the earthwork cost strongly depends on the design of vertical alignment or project line. In this study, at first, the problem of vertical alignment optimization was formulated. To this end, station, elevation and vertical curve length in case of each point of vertical intersec...

The present study is concerned with the simultaneous optimization of the size of components and the arrangement of connections for performance-based seismic design of low-rise SPSWs. Design variables include the size of beams and columns, the thickness of the infill panels, the type of each beam-to-column connection and the type of each infill-to-boundary frame connection. The objective functio...

The paper studies optimization of shell-and-tube heat exchangers using the particle swarm optimization technique. A total cost function is formulated based on initial and annual operating costs of the heat exchangers. Six variables – shell inside diameter, tube diameter, baffle spacing, baffle cut, number of tube passes and tube layouts (triangular or square) – are considered as the design para...

this article presents the application of two algorithms: heuristic big bang-big crunch (hbb-bc) and a heuristic particle swarm ant colony optimization (hpsaco) to discrete optimization of reinforced concrete planar frames subject to combinations of gravity and lateral loads based on aci 318-08 code. the objective function is the total cost of the frame which includes the cost of concrete, formw...

the synthesis of heat integrated multi-component distillation systems is complex due to its huge search space for structural combination and optimization computation. to provide a systematic approach and tools for the synthesis design of distillation systems, a new method for modeling heat integrated columns is presented, and the operating cost objective function is minimized by improved harmon...

Energy, exergy and exergoeconomic (3E) evaluation are performed to assess the performance of a NH3/H2O cycle integrated with parabolic trough solar collectors (PTSC). To provide continuous electricity produced by generator when solar beam radiation is insufficient a stabilizer temperature subsystem is utilized. The major thermodynamic parameters and climate conditions variations are selected to...

The optimal design of a plate-fin recuperator of a 200-kW microturbine was studied in this paper. The exergy efficiency, pressure drop and total cost were selected as the three important objective functions of the recuperator. Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) were respectively employed for single-objective and multi-objective optimizations. By opt...