Original scientific paper
Forest Road Access Decisions for Woods Chip Trailers Using Ant Colony Optimization and Breakeven Analysis
Storm Beck
; Oregon State University Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management Oregon State University Corvallis, Oregon 97331 USA
John Sessions
; Oregon State University Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management Oregon State University Corvallis, Oregon 97331 USA
Abstract
Non-conventional products provide opportunities for the forest industry to increase economic value from forests; however, these products may require transport by specialized vehicles. The existing forest transportation network was not necessarily designed to the road standards required for these specialized vehicles. Several road modifications can be made to give specialized vehicles access to the forest transportation network including filling the ditch, removing the superelevation, reversing the superelevation, or reconstructing the roadway. For each investment, there is an associated vehicle that can traverse the road segment if the investment is made. For scheduling multiple biomass operations over a road network, we use the Ant Colony heuristic to identify the combination of optimal vehicle choices and road modifications to effectively transport non-conventional products. These combinations related to a 27% reduction in total transportation costs. For isolated biomass operations, we use breakeven analysis to make the vehicle selection and road modification option. Decisions for isolated biomass operations depend on road modification cost, transport volume, and transport costs on forest and highway roads.
Keywords
ant colony optimization; biomass transport; vehicle accessibility
Hrčak ID:
116777
URI
Publication date:
1.10.2013.
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