A Mixed Integer Programming formulation for the three dimensional bin packing problem deriving from an air cargo application

摘要

The present paper looks into the problem of optimising the loading of boxesinto containers. The goal is to minimise the unused volume. This type of problem belongsto the family of Multiple Bin Size Bin Packing Problems. The approach includes an extensiveset of constraints encountered in real-world applications in the three-dimensional case:the stability, the fragility of the items, the weight distribution and the possibility to rotatethe boxes. It also includes the specific situation in which containers are truncated parallelepipeds.This is typical in the field of air transportation. While most papers on cuttingand packing problems describe ad-hoc procedures, this paper proposes a mixed integer linearprogram. The validity of this model is tested on small instances.