Date of Award

8-2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Industrial Engineering (MSIE)

Department

Industrial Engineering

Committee Chair

Seokcheon Lee

Committee Member 1

Hua Cai

Committee Member 2

Byung-Cheol Min

Abstract

The truck-drone hybrid delivery system uses a truck as a station for drones in addition to its delivery function and is getting attention because the strengths of these individual vehicles can be selectively and synergistically exploited. In this study, the previous vehicle routing models are extended to the hybrid delivery systems by taking into account two important practical issues: the effect of parcel weight on drone energy consumption and prohibited flying areas. The flight range of the drones is heavily susceptible to the loaded weight due to the limited battery life. Drones are also not allowed to fly over sensitive facilities regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or temporarily in certain areas due to weather-related conditions. A mathematical model that incorporates these issues is developed, and a two-phase constructive and search heuristic algorithm is proposed to provide computational efficiency of the real-world cases problems. The result of the numerical study demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Share

COinS