A dynamic flight stringbased ant colony algorithm for fleet assignment

摘要

A mathematical model with the flight string as the decision variables, aiming to minimize the number of the flights and to maximize the maintenance opportunities, is proposed in this paper, and a dynamically constructed flight string based ant colony algorithm is presented to solve the problem. A new mechanism of pheromone update is utilized in the algorithm to fasten the convergence rate. Numerical examples are extended from the small scale scheduling problems with single maintenance base to the large scale scheduling problems with multiple maintenance bases. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm could not only solve the problem, but also improve the efficiency.