A family of heuristic-based inequalities for maximizing overall safety margins in aircraft parking stands arrangement problems

Abstract

We consider the problem of arranging a set of aircraft in a maintenance hangar operated by an independent aircraft service provider. The overall safety margins of the parking layout need to be maximized within the limited available space, measured by the weighted sum of the individual discrete safety margins of each aircraft. A mixed-integer linear programming model is developed, and the positions of the aircraft are determined by the position-controlling binary variables associated with a set of revised No-Fit Polygons (NFPs). Due to the nonconvex irregular shape of aircraft, the model involves a great number of binary variables associated with the revised NFP. The default branch-and-bound algorithm is inefficient in solving such a model as the infeasibility information of the precedent visited solution cannot be directly utilized by the default method to update the bounds. A heuristic algorithm is developed to provide practical solutions, and the intermediate infeasible solutions identified during searching are utilized to develop valid and approximate inequalities, tightening the optimality gap. The computational results demonstrate that the addition of inequalities improves the computational efficiency in solving a wide range of instances and in tightening the optimality gap while the stopping criterion is met.