A stimulus–response-based allocation method for the circle packing problem with equilibrium constraints

Yingcong Wang, Yanfeng Wang, Junwei Sun, Chun Huang and Xuncai Zhang

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2019, vol. 522, issue C, 232-247

Abstract: Based on the industrial background of packing objects inside the satellites, this paper addresses the circle packing problem with equilibrium constraints. From a new view of any solid material occupying certain space, a solution of the problem can be seen as different circular objects occupy different space in the container. Hence, the circle packing problem can be treated as a space allocation problem of allocating the container space reasonably to circular objects. Through the mapping between the task allocation in swarm intelligence labor division and the space allocation in circle packing problems, we propose a stimulus–response-based allocation (SRA) method. In this paper, we design four actions, viz., fix, shift, jump and swap, for circular objects to occupy the container space. The SRA method adopts the stimulus–response mechanism of labor division to regulate the actions performed on circular objects. With the characteristic of flexibility inherent in the stimulus–response mechanism, SRA could achieve an effective space allocation under dynamically changed packing environments. Three sets of 35 benchmark instances are used to test the performance of SRA, and SRA improves the best-known results on 28 instances, matches 4 and misses 3.

Keywords: Circle packing; Equilibrium constraints; Space allocation; Allocation method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:522:y:2019:i:c:p:232-247

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2019.02.007

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