A bi-objective formulation for refueling stations selection problem

Abstract

Using fossil fuels in transportation sector has caused many environmental and economic problems. Therefore, the use of alternative fuel vehicles is necessary. Since such vehicles have limited fuel tank capacities, hence, frequent refueling is required. Regarding the possibility of the existence of different fuel costs in various refueling stations, the selection of suitable stations with the purpose of minimizing total cost of refueling is important. Moreover, minimizing the number of refuelings could be considered as another important criterion in refueling operations of a given trip. In this paper an integer bi-objective model is proposed to select suitable refueling stations considering two criteria of minimizing the total cost of refueling and minimizing the number of refuelings. To solve the proposed model, a new algorithm is suggested and its performance is compared with the weighted sum method of multi-objective optimization literature. The results show the superiority of the proposed solution approach.