Abstract
In this paper we study the polyhedron associated with the Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP) where a maximum number K of vehicles is available. We show that a subset of the facets of the CARP polyhedron depends only on the demands of the required edges and they can be derived from the study of the Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP). The conditions for a larger class of valid inequalities to define facets of the CARP polyhedron still depend on the properties of the GAP polyhedron. We introduce the special case of the CARP where all the required edges have unit demand (CARPUD) to avoid the number problem represented by the GAP. This allows us to make a polyhedral study in which the conditions for the inequalities to be facet inducing are easily verifiable. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a variety of inequalities, which are valid for CARP, to be facet inducing for CARPUD.
The resulting partial description of the polyhedron has been used to develop a cutting plane algorithm for the Capacitated Arc Routing Problem. The lower bound provided by this algorithm outperformed all the existing lower bounds for the CARP on a set of 34 instances taken from the literature.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A. Assad, W. Pearn, and B.L. Golden, "The capacitated chinese postman problem: Lower bounds and solvable cases," American J. of Mathematical and Man. Sci., vol. 7, pp. 63-88, 1987.
A. Assad and B.L. Golden, "Arc routing methods and applications," Handbook on Operations Research and Management Science, North-Holland, vol. 6, pp. 375-483, 1995.
E. Balas and E. Zemel, "Facets of the knapsack polytope from minimal covers," SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, vol. 34, pp. 119-148, 1978.
J.M. Belenguer, "El poliedro del problema de rutas por arcos con capacidades," Ph.D. Thesis, Universitat de Valencia, 1990.
J.M. Belenguer and E. Benavent, “Polyhedral results on the capacitated arc routing problem,” Dep. Estadística e Inv. Op., T.R. 1-92, Univ. de Valencia, 1992.
J.M. Belenguer, E. Benavent, and F. Cognata, "A tabu heuristic for the capacitated arc routing problem," 1996, in preparation.
E. Beltrami and L. Bodin, "Networks and vehicle routing for municipal waste collection," Networks, vol. 4, pp. 65-94, 1974.
E. Benavent, V. Campos, A. Corberan, and E. Mota, "The capacitated arc routing problem. A heuristic algorithm," Questiió, vol. 14, nos.1-3, pp. 107-122, 1990.
E. Benavent, V. Campos, A. Corberan, and E. Mota, "The capacitated arc routing problem. Lower bounds," Networks, vol. 22, pp. 669-690, 1992.
L.D. Bodin and S.J. Kursh, "A detailed description of a computer system for the routing and scheduling of street sweepers," Computers and Oper. Res., vol. 6, pp. 181-198, 1979.
N. Christofides, “The optimum traversal of a graph,” OMEGA, vol. 1, pp. 719-732, 1973.
CPLEX Version 2.0, CPLEX Optimization Inc., 1992.
G. Cornuejols and F. Harche, "Polyhedral study of the capacitated vehicle routing problem," Mathematical Programming, vol. 60, pp. 21-52, 1993.
R.W. Eglese and L.Y.O. Li, "Efficient routing for winter gritting," Journal of the Operational Research Society, vol. 43, pp. 1031-1034, 1992.
H.A. Eiselt, M. Gendreau, and G. Laporte, "Arc routing problems, Part 1: The Chinese postman problem," Operations Research, vol. 43, pp. 231-242, 1995.
H.A. Eiselt, M. Gendreau, and G. Laporte, "Arc routing problems, Part 2: The rural postman problem," Operations Research, vol. 43, pp. 399-414, 1995.
M.R. Garey and D.S. Johnson, Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness, Freeman, 1979.
B.L. Golden and R. Wong, "Capacitated arc routing problems," Networks, vol. 11, pp. 305-315, 1981.
B.L. Golden, J.S. DeArmon, and E.K. Baker, "Computational experiments with algorithms for a class of routing problems," Computers and Oper. Res., vol. 10, pp. 47-59, 1983.
E.S. Gottlieb and M.R. Rao, "The generalized assignment problem: Valid inequalities and facets," Mathematical Programming, vol. 46, pp. 31-52, 1990.
E.S. Gottlieb and M.R. Rao, "(1, k)-Configuration facets for the generalized assignment problem," Mathematical Programming, vol. 46, pp. 53-60, 1990.
F. Harche and G. Rinaldi, "The capacity inequalities for the capacitated vehicle routing problem," 1993, in preparation.
G.L. Nemhauser and L.A. Wolsey, Integer and Combinatorial Optimization, Wiley: New York, 1988.
M.W. Padberg, "(1, k)-Configurations and facets for packing problems," Mathematical Programming, vol. 18, pp. 94-99, 1980.
M.W. Padberg and M.R. Rao, "Odd minimum cut-sets and b-matchings," Mathematics of Oper. Res., vol. 7, pp. 67-80, 1982.
M.W. Padberg and G. Rinaldi, "Optimization of a 532-city symmetric traveling salesman problem by branch-and-cut," Operations Research Letters, vol. 6, pp. 1-7, 1987.
W.L. Pearn, "New lower bounds for the capacitated arc routing problems," Networks, vol. 18, pp. 181-191, 1988.
W.L. Pearn, "Approximate solutions for the capacitated arc routing problem," Computers and Oper. Res., vol. 1, no.16, pp. 589-600, 1989.
W.L. Pearn, "Augment-insert algorithms for the capacitated arc routing problem," Computers and Oper. Res., no. 18, pp. 189-198, 1991.
W.L. Pearn, A.A. Assad, and B. L. Golden "Transforming arc routing into node routing problems," Computers and Oper. Res., no. 14, pp. 285-288, 1987.
H. Stern and M. Dror, "Routing electric meter readers," Computers and Oper. Res., vol. 6, pp. 209-223, 1979.
Z. Win, "Contributions to routing problems," Ph.D. Thesis, University of Augsburg, 1988.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Belenguer, J., Benavent, E. The Capacitated Arc Routing Problem: Valid Inequalities and Facets. Computational Optimization and Applications 10, 165–187 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018316919294
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018316919294