A decision support system for air cargo | |
| Author | Apisit Phahisuk |
| Call Number | AIT Thesis no. ISE-01-18 |
| Subject(s) | Decision support systems Aeronautics, Commercial--Freight |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Thesis ; no. ISE-01-18 |
| Abstract | This study is a combination of the air cargo container loading and allocation problems. Air cargo container loading is classified as a three-dimensional packing problems among general cutting and packing problems. Most literatures assume that the containers and boxes are rectangular; nevertheless, the shapes of air cargo containers do not practically satisfy the assumption. This study is an extension and application of the thesis of Tanwiwatwong (2000) that the container shape of his study is rectangular. Therefore, the further study of this work is the half-width container, a unit load device (ULD), under the practical loading constraints, box priority and broken space. This study also applies the concept of the "abstract container" to achieve the "wing packing", a loading pattern of pallet loading. In addition, the "sliced- off support" is a loading pattern introduced in order to increase the volume utilization of the half-width container. The experiments of this application are caITied out under twenty real-world problems and thirty randomly generated problems of Tangwiwatwong (2000). To achieve the safety condition, it is necessary to balance all weights of containers and pallets allocated at positions of aircraft compartments. The center of gravity of the airplane is represented by a moment value that must be in safety range. Two aircraft types, passenger and freighter types, under different balancing constraints will be discussed in the study. Since firms want to utilize the compartment volume as much as possible. Therefore, the objective of the container allocation is to maximize the volume utilization of aircraft compartments subjects to balancing constraints and container priority. A heuristic allocation controlled by the container and position evaluation functions is developed. In order to obtain a satisfactory solution of the combinations of containers and pallets, a genetic algorithm is applied to find the weight coefficients of these two evaluation functions. Based on the proposed algorithm, a decision support system (DSS) named PlanePacks is developed and thirty two randomly generated problems are examined for both aircraft types. The effectiveness of this algorithm is also tested on the twenty realworld applications. The comparative results indicate that the algorithm is able to obtain a good solution under practical constraints. |
| Year | 2001 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. ISE-01-18 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Advanced Technologies (SAT) |
| Department | Department of Industrial Systems Engineering (DISE) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Industrial Systems Engineering (ISE) |
| Chairperson(s) | Anulark Techanitisawad; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Bechter, Clemens ;Vatcharaporn Esichaikul ; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | The Siam Cement Public Company Limited ; |
| Degree | Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2001 |