- Title
- A flexible variable neighbourhood search algorithm for different variants of the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem
- Creator
- Souza, André L.S.; Papini, Marcella; Penna, Puca H. V.; Souza, Marcone J. F.
- Relation
- Computers and Operations Research Vol. 168, no. 106713
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2024.106713
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- This manuscript presents a flexible variable neighbourhood search (VNS)-based (Flexi-VNS) algorithm to tackle both the classical Electrical Vehicle Routing Problem (EVRP) and the Battery Swap Station Location-routing Problem with Capacitated Electric Vehicles (BSS-EV-LRP). The latter has been addressed in just a few studies. It incorporates into the EVRP the battery swapping stations (BSS) location requirement to be jointly taken with decisions on the routing of electric vehicles. The Flexi-VNS algorithm includes a Randomised Variable Neighbourhood Descent (RVND) method as the local search procedure, which incorporates a new intra-RVND procedure called every time a solution is modified and applied only to those routes that have been modified. We assess the performance of Flexi-VNS on EVRP and BSS-EV-LRP benchmark instances and compare it with some algorithms in the literature. The statistical test did not guarantee the existence of a statistical difference between the proposed algorithm and the best algorithm from the literature for each problem, considering a 95% confidence level. However, despite this, computational results showed the Flexi-VNS efficiency. It improved several of the best-known solutions and reduced the number of constructed battery swap stations. More specifically, Flexi-VNS was able to equal or improve the BKS values of 15 out of a total of 20 instances with available results in the literature for BSS-EV-LRP and 47 out of 52 instances available for the EVRP, totalling 75% of the BSS-EV-LRP instances and 90.38% of the EVRP instances. Furthermore, compared to the exact algorithms, the optimal solutions were found using only a fraction of the computational times reported. Additionally, Flexi-VNS was the first to provide solutions for some BSS-EV-LRP instances.
- Subject
- electric vehicles; vehicle routing problem; battery swap station; location-routing problem; variable neighbourhood search
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1511688
- Identifier
- uon:56526
- Identifier
- ISSN:0305-0548
- Language
- eng
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