title: A ripple-spreading genetic algorithm for the aircraft sequencing problem.
abstract: When genetic algorithms (GAs) are applied to combinatorial problems, permutation representations are usually adopted. As a result, such GAs are often confronted with feasibility and memory-efficiency problems. With the aircraft sequencing problem (ASP) as a study case, this paper reports on a novel binary-representation-based GA scheme for combinatorial problems. Unlike existing GAs for the ASP, which typically use permutation representations based on aircraft landing order, the new GA introduces a novel ripple-spreading model which transforms the original landing-order-based ASP solutions into value-based ones. In the new scheme, arriving aircraft are projected as points into an artificial space. A deterministic method inspired by the natural phenomenon of ripple-spreading on liquid surfaces is developed, which uses a few parameters as input to connect points on this space to form a landing sequence. A traditional GA, free of feasibility and memory-efficiency problems, can then be used to evolve the ripple-spreading related parameters in order to find an optimal sequence. Since the ripple-spreading model is the centerpiece of the new algorithm, it is called the ripple-spreading GA (RSGA). The advantages of the proposed RSGA are illustrated by extensive comparative studies for the case of the ASP.
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. xiaobing.hu@warwick.ac.uk
authors.forename: Xiao-Bing
authors.initials: XB
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Ezequiel A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Di Paolo
mesh_terms: D000401:Aircraft; D059028:Airports; D000465:Algorithms