Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences

Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences
Author: Wade H. Shafer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1468451979

Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences was first conceived, published, and disseminated by the Center for Information and Numerical Data Analysis and Synthesis (CINDAS) * at Purdue University in 1 957, starting its coverage of theses with the academic year 1955. Beginning with Volume 13, the printing and dissemination phases of the activity were transferred to University Microfilms/Xerox of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with the thought that such an arrangement would be more beneficial to the academic and general scientific and technical community. After five years of this joint undertaking we had concluded that it was in the interest of all con cerned if the printing and distribution of the volumes were handled by an interna tional publishing house to assure improved service and broader dissemination. Hence, starting with Volume 18, Masters Theses in the Pure and Applied Sciences has been disseminated on a worldwide basis by Plenum Publishing Cor poration of New York, and in the same year the coverage was broadened to include Canadian universities. All back issues can also be ordered from Plenum. We have reported in Volume 29 (thesis year 1984) a total of 12,637 theses titles from 23 Canadian and 202 United States universities. We are sure that this broader base for these titles reported will greatly enhance the value of this important annual reference work. While Volume 29 reports theses submitted in 1984, on occasion, certain univer sities do report theses submitted in previous years but not reported at the time.

Concurrent planning of railway maintenance windows and train services

Concurrent planning of railway maintenance windows and train services
Author: Tomas Lidén
Publisher: Linköping University Electronic Press
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2018-11-05
Genre:
ISBN: 9176852016

Efficiency in public and freight transportation systems is of great importance for a society. Railways can other high capacity and relatively low environmental impact, but require that several technical systems are tuned and operate well. Specifically there is a tight interdependency between infrastructure and trains. The consequences are that all subsystems must be maintained and that the coordination of infrastructure activities and train operations is essential. Railway infrastructure maintenance and train services should ideally be planned together, but practice and research about railway scheduling has historically focused mainly on train operations and timetabling while maintenance planning has received less attention | and little research have considered the joint scheduling of both types of activities. Instead the traditional approach has been a sequential and iterative planning procedure, where train timetabling often has precedence over infrastructure maintenance. This thesis studies how maintenance windows, which are regular time windows reserved for maintenance work, can be dimensioned and jointly scheduled with train services in a balanced and efficient way for both maintenance contractors and train operators. Mathematical methods are used, with the aim of advancing the knowledge about quantitative methods for solving such coordination problems. The thesis contributes with new optimization models that jointly schedule maintenance windows and train services, investigates the solving efficiency of these models, and studies crucial extensions of the planning problem | primarily for the consideration of maintenance resources. Furthermore, the models are applied to, verified and validated on a demanding real-life problem instance. The main results are that integrated and optimal scheduling of maintenance windows and train services is viable for problems of practical size and importance, and that substantial maintenance cost savings can be achieved with such an integrated approach as compared to a traditional sequential planning process. The thesis consists of an introduction and overview of the research, followed by six papers which present: (1) A cost benefit model for assessment of competing capacity requests at a single location; (2) An optimization model for integrated scheduling of both maintenance windows and train services; (3) Mathematical reformulations that strengthen the optimization model; (4) Extensions for handling resource considerations and cyclic schedules; (5) A case study for a major single track line in Sweden; and (6) A mathematical study of length-restricted sequences under cyclic conditions.

Optimization Models for Transport and Service Scheduling

Optimization Models for Transport and Service Scheduling
Author: Kursad Derinkuyu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation focuses on service scheduling and transshipment problems. The study of service scheduling is motivated by decisions facing service planners, who must inspect and maintain geographically dispersed infrastructure facilities. We study the problem of deciding which operations a service unit must perform at each customer location, given the sequence in which the unit periodically visits these locations. Each customer requires multiple service operations, and each operation has a time-varying completion or penalty cost that depends on the previous service time. The goal is to schedule the service start time for each customer and select the operations to perform so as to minimize the total completion cost. We first discuss how to solve a special case of this problem in which each site is visited only once per service cycle. We formulate this problem as a discrete time indexed network flow problem and prove that it is NP-hard in the ordinary sense. Then, we represent the problem as a multidimensional shortest path problem with path-dependent arc lengths. In this structure, arc costs depend on the total time spent for all customers. The resulting formulation is solvable via algorithms that have pseudo-polynomial run times. Computational results show that the shortest path approach outperformed the general network flow model. We then analyze the general case of this problem, in which each site can be visited more than once and prove that the problem is NP-Hard in the strong sense. We discuss the valid cuts and describe the preprocessor that reduces the problem size. Next, we examine an application to the general case of the problem and develop a fast and effective heuristic procedure that repeatedly applies the shortest path approach to subsequences that do not visit any customer more than once. Computational results for several problem instances show that the proposed heuristic identifies near optimal results very quickly, whereas a general purpose integer-programming solver (CPLEX) is not able to find an optimal solution even after many hours of computational time. Then we focus on techniques such as problem reduction, branching variables, and subdividing problem to smaller problems to get better solution times for the actual problem. Computational results show that these techniques can improve solution times substantially. Finally, we study a transshipment problem, in which the shipments need to be transported from their origin to destination and are subject to the logical and physical transportation network on which they rely. We consider a space-time network that allows one to formulate the problem as a multi-commodity network flow problem with additional side constraints and show the complexity results. We propose alternative models and propose algorithms for lower and upper bound calculations.

Optimization Modelling

Optimization Modelling
Author: Ruhul Amin Sarker
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2007-10-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1420043110

Although a useful and important tool, the potential of mathematical modelling for decision making is often neglected. Considered an art by many and weird science by some, modelling is not as widely appreciated in problem solving and decision making as perhaps it should be. And although many operations research, management science, and optimization

Optimization Methods for Maintenance and Operation Scheduling

Optimization Methods for Maintenance and Operation Scheduling
Author: Yaqing Wu
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre:
ISBN:

Optimization-based scheduling deals with the allocation of resources, such as process units, utilities, and manpower, to tasks over given horizons to optimize one or more objectives, including cost minimization and profit maximization. Despite extensive studies in optimization-based scheduling, efficient optimization methods to obtain schedules over relatively long horizons require further research. Thus, in this work, we propose a series of optimization models and frameworks to obtain high-quality operation and maintenance schedules over relatively long horizons for various systems. First, we develop optimization methods for condition-based maintenance scheduling of building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. To our knowledge, the proposed approach is the first one to consider the interactions among different pieces of equipment and the interdependencies among operation, maintenance, and equipment health. The approach, which consists of two stages (parameter generation and optimization), leads to high-quality solutions and can be readily applied to a wide range of systems. Second, we develop a novel optimization framework for system design and planning under temporal variability. Specially, we use time series aggregation method to decrease the number of time periods considered and propose formulations to embed piecewise decision trees, which act as surrogate models for system operations. The proposed framework leads to computational efficiency while capturing the frequent change of system behaviors operations of the high-frequency variability of the external time-varying parameters. We then present a general mixed-integer programming model for periodic production scheduling. The formulation, which is based on the state-task network representation, allows us to model (1) accurate inventory levels, (2) various inventory policies, (3) different demand patterns and profiles, and (4) flexible assignment of tasks to units. The model addresses multiple limitations of previous approaches to periodic scheduling and allows us to address various types of periodic scheduling problems. Finally, we propose a general framework for the formulation and solution of continuous process scheduling problems. We focus on modeling transient operations such as startups, shutdowns, and transitions between steady states. we discuss how to systematically calculate the parameters describing material consumption/production and utility consumption during transient operations, and we present new mixed-integer linear programming formulations for the scheduling of continuous chemical production.

System Modeling and Optimization

System Modeling and Optimization
Author: F. Ceragioli
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2006-03-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0387327746

This book presents selected proceedings from the 22nd biennial IFIP conference on System Modeling and Optimization, held in Turin, Italy in July of 2005. This edition of the conference is dedicated to the achievements of Camillo Possio, who was killed sixty years ago during the last air raid over Turin. For more information about the 300 other books in the IFIP series, please visit www.springeronline.com.

Statistical Methods for QTL Mapping

Statistical Methods for QTL Mapping
Author: Zehua Chen
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 944
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0415669863

While numerous advanced statistical approaches have recently been developed for quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, the methods are scattered throughout the literature. Statistical Methods for QTL Mapping brings together many recent statistical techniques that address the data complexity of QTL mapping. After introducing basic genetics topics and statistical principles, the author discusses the principles of quantitative genetics, general statistical issues of QTL mapping, commonly used one-dimensional QTL mapping approaches, and multiple interval mapping methods. He then explains how to use a feature selection approach to tackle a QTL mapping problem with dense markers. The book also provides comprehensive coverage of Bayesian models and MCMC algorithms and describes methods for multi-trait QTL mapping and eQTL mapping, including meta-trait methods and multivariate sequential procedures. This book emphasizes the modern statistical methodology for QTL mapping as well as the statistical issues that arise during this process. It gives the necessary biological background for statisticians without training in genetics and, likewise, covers statistical thinking and principles for geneticists. Written primarily for geneticists and statisticians specializing in QTL mapping, the book can also be used as a supplement in graduate courses or for self-study by PhD students working on QTL mapping projects.

Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization

Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization
Author: António Gaspar-Cunha
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2015-03-17
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319158929

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, EMO 2015 held in Guimarães, Portugal in March/April 2015. The 68 revised full papers presented together with 4 plenary talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 90 submissions. The EMO 2015 aims to continue these type of developments, being the papers presented focused in: theoretical aspects, algorithms development, many-objectives optimization, robustness and optimization under uncertainty, performance indicators, multiple criteria decision making and real-world applications.