Lamas-Fernandez, C, Bennell, JA orcid.org/0000-0002-5338-2247 and Martinez-Sykora, A (2022) Voxel-Based Solution Approaches to the Three-Dimensional Irregular Packing Problem. Operations Research. ISSN 0030-364X
Abstract
Research on the three-dimensional (3D) packing problem has largely focused on packing boxes for the transportation of goods. As a result, there has been little focus on packing irregular shapes in the operational research literature. New technologies have raised the practical importance of 3D irregular packing problems and the need for efficient solutions. In this work, we address the variant of the problem where the aim is to place a set of 3D irregular items in a container, while minimizing the container height, analogous to the strip packing problem. In order to solve this problem, we need to address two critical components; efficient computation of the geometry and finding high-quality solutions. In this work, we explore the potential of voxels, the 3D equivalent of pixels, as the geometric representation of the irregular items. In this discretised space, we develop a geometric tool that extends the concept of the nofit polygon to the 3D case. This enables us to provide an integer linear programming formulation for this problem that can solve some small instances. For practical size problems, we design metaheuristic optimisation approaches. Because the literature is limited, we introduce new benchmark instances. Some are randomly generated and some represent realistic models from the additive manufacturing area. Our results on the literature benchmark data and on our new instances show that our metaheuristic techniques achieve the best known solutions for a wide variety of problems in practical computation times.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | Operations Research. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.2022.2260, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | 3D irregular packing; open dimension problem; voxel; metaheuristics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Faculty Office (LUBS) (Leeds) > Deans Office and Facilities (LUBS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 May 2022 10:04 |
Last Modified: | 05 May 2022 10:04 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | INFORMS |
Identification Number: | 10.1287/opre.2022.2260 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:186468 |