Title
Heuristic solutions for general concave minimum cost network flow problems
Abstract
We address the single-source uncapacitated minimum cost network flow problem with general concave cost functions. Exact methods to solve this class of problems in their full generality are only able to address small to medium size instances, since this class of problems is known to be NP-Hard. Therefore, approximate methods are more suitable. In this work, we present a hybrid approach combining a genetic algorithm with a local search. Randomly generated test problems have been used to test the computational performance of the algorithm. The results obtained for these test problems are compared to optimal solutions obtained by a dynamic programming method for the smaller problem instances and to upper bounds obtained by a local search method for the larger problem instances. From the results reported it can be shown that the hybrid methodology improves upon previous approaches in terms of efficiency and also on the pure genetic algorithm, i.e., without using the local search procedure. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 50(1), 67–76 2007
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1002/net.v50:1
Networks
Keywords
Field
DocType
network flow,upper bound,heuristics,local search,cost function,genetic algorithms,combinatorial optimization,genetic algorithm
Flow network,Mathematical optimization,Heuristic,Search algorithm,Concave function,Algorithm,Combinatorial optimization,Local search (optimization),Mathematics,Minimum-cost flow problem,Genetic algorithm
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
50
1
0028-3045
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
11
0.60
20
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Dalila B. M. M. Fontes110211.77
José Fernando Gonçalves273637.31