Krishnan, Advaith and Maden, William and Boyaci, Burak and Lulli, Guglielmo (2023) Charging Constrained Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Prioritized Customers. Masters thesis, Lancaster University.
Abstract
This thesis proposes a unique Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) focusing on charging management optimisations for electric vehicles with prioritised customers. This problem is modelled as a hybrid of the Travelling Repairman Problem (TRP) and the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem (EVRP). After a brief literature review around the scope of the problem, a base mathematical model is formulated to explain the constraints and objective function of the problem. The problem is solved using a Nearest Neighbour Based Heuristic (NNBH) and Simulated Annealing with Variable Neighbourhood Search. The Nearest Neighbour Based Heuristic (NNBH) generates an initial solution. The initial solution is used by the metaheuristic for achieving a better final solution. The base mathematical model is used to benchmark the performance of the solution approach. The algorithmic framework developed is run for smaller and larger instances to demonstrate the accuracy and scalability of the model produced, respectively. The computational results of both instances show the success of the proposed model.