Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.1515/otmcj-2016-0023
Precedence permutation patterns creating criticality constellations: Exploring a conjecture on nonlinear activities with continuous links
Gunnar Lucko
; Catholic University of America Washington, DC UNITED STATES
Yi Su
; Department of Civil Engineering Catholic University of America
Abstract
The inaugural challenge of the 2016 Creative
Construction Conference has posed two related questions
on how many possible criticality constellations with different
behaviors for delays and acceleration exist and how
said constellations can occur for nonlinearly and monotonously
progressing activities that have continuous relations.
This paper systematically solves these questions
by performing a thorough literature review, assembling
theoretical foundations for link constellations, performing
a computer simulation of all possible permutations,
and providing a mathematical proof by contradiction.
It is found that (for the initially assumed self-contained
activities in a network schedule that exhibit only a linearly
growing production), three newly hypothesized
criticality constellations cannot exist. Nonlinear activity
constellations with diverging or converging relative productivities
are examined next. Lags in networks become
buffers in linear schedules. It is found that a nonlinear
curvature of the progress may induce middle-to-middle
relations besides those between start and finish. If multiple
curvatures are allowed, then partial segments can
form relations, which increase the number of criticality
constellations. This paper is extended from the 2017 Procedia
Engineering conference version.
Keywords
precedence diagramming; link constellations; continuous precedence relations; classification of critical activities
Hrčak ID:
198177
URI
Publication date:
16.2.2018.
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