Detecting Patterns in Benchmark Instances of the Swap-Body Vehicle Routing Problem

摘要

The present study aims at identifying possible relations between solution features and different characteristics of the Swap-body Vehicle Routing Problem. For this purpose, an investigation has been conducted on two established benchmark sets. Our analysis reveals the existence of hidden patterns with respect to various aspects of the corresponding problem instances. The detected patterns are then used to formulate problem-specific properties, which hold for the majority of the instances under consideration. Our findings may be employed as guidelines in the design of algorithmic components, such as new selection techniques that choose only a subset of specific nodes of interest from the vehicle routing network. Also, our work sheds further light on the effect of various problem characteristics on the structure of their best known solutions.