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Container loading for nonorthogonal objects: an approximation using local search and simulated annealing

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Abstract

Container loading problems consist of finding an appropriate way to load objects into a container. A few alternative algorithms have been defined based on different optimization approaches. Different algorithms also depend on the types of objects considered. In most of the cases, however, the shape of the objects is restricted to be orthogonal (i.e., standard boxes). In this paper, we consider the case where the shape of the objects can be any polyhedron. We propose an algorithm using local search and simulated annealing, and we show that for standard boxes, it has a similar performance than previously established methods.

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Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Fomento (project PON, T27/2006) and MEC (projects CONSOLIDER INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00004, and TSI2007-65406-C03-02) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR, 2006BE-2 00338).

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Correspondence to Vicenç Torra.

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Torra, V., Cano, I., Miyamoto, S. et al. Container loading for nonorthogonal objects: an approximation using local search and simulated annealing. Soft Comput 14, 537–544 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-009-0445-x

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