A polynomial algorithm for the earthwork allocation problem with borrow and waste site selection

Hüseyin Güden () and Haldun Süral ()
Additional contact information
Hüseyin Güden: Eastern Mediterranean University
Haldun Süral: Middle East Technical University

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2017, vol. 68, issue 9, 1085-1093

Abstract: Abstract In road construction projects, earthwork is planned together with horizontal and vertical alignments. This study focuses on earthwork operations that basically include cutting the hills and filling the holes on the road path. The candidate borrow and waste sites can also be used to obtain or heap earth when the available cut and fill amounts are not balanced or operating these sites reduces the total earthwork cost. Total earthwork cost contains the transportation cost and the overall cost related to opening the candidate sites. The problem is to determine which borrow and waste sites to operate, and the earth flows between cut, fill, waste, and borrow sites such that the total cost is minimized. It is shown that the problem is a generalization of the well-known lot-sizing problem. A fixed charge network flow problem formulation is presented, and a polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm is developed for solving the problem.

Keywords: road construction; dynamic programming; location; lot sizing; logistics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41274-016-0140-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:68:y:2017:i:9:d:10.1057_s41274-016-0140-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

DOI: 10.1057/s41274-016-0140-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().