Fast feasibility check of the multi-material vertical alignment problem in road design

Dominique Monnet (), Warren Hare and Yves Lucet
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Dominique Monnet: UBCO
Warren Hare: UBCO
Yves Lucet: UBCO

Computational Optimization and Applications, 2020, vol. 75, issue 2, No 8, 515-536

Abstract: Abstract When building a road, it is critical to select a vertical alignment which ensures design and safety constraints. Finding such a vertical alignment is not necessarily a feasible problem, and the models describing it generally involve a large number of variables and constraints. This paper is dedicated to rapidly proving the feasibility or the infeasibility of a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) modeling the vertical alignment problem. To do so, we take advantage of the particular structure of the MILP, and we prove that only a few of the MILP’s constraints determine the feasibility of the problem. In addition, we propose a method to build a feasible solution to the MILP that does not involve integer variables. This enables time saving to proving the feasibility of the vertical alignment problem and to find a feasible vertical alignment, as emphasized by numerical results. It is on average 75 times faster to prove the feasibility and 10 times faster to build a feasible solution.

Keywords: Road design; Vertical alignment; MILP; Feasibility testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10589-019-00160-3

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