Applied Mathematical Modelling, ( ISI ), Volume (38), No (15), Year (2014-8) , Pages (3945-3957)

Title : ( The time constrained maximal covering salesman problem )

Authors: Zahra Naji Azimi , Majid Salari ,

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Abstract

We introduce the time constrained maximal covering salesman problem (TCMCSP) which is the generalization of the covering salesman and orienting problems. In this problem, we are given a set of vertices including a central depot, customer and facility vertices where each facility can supply the demand of some customers within its pre-determined coverage distance. Starting from the depot, the goal is to maximize the covered customers through constructing a length constrained Hamiltonian cycle over a subset of facilities. We propose several mathematical programming models for the studied problem followed by a heuristic algorithm. The developed algorithm takes advantage of different procedures including swap, deletion, extraction-insertion and perturbation. Finally, an integer linear programming based improvement technique is designed to try to improve the quality of the solutions. Extensive computational experiments on a set of benchmark instances indicate the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Keywords

, Time Constrained Maximal Covering Salesman Problem, Mixed Integer Programming, Heuristics.