Research on Optimum Combination of Transportation Modes In The Container Multimodal Transportation System

Abstract

There are many optimization problems in the container multimodal transportation system. For this paper some research was conducted on an optimum combination of transportation modes. First, there is some description and deformation on a multimodal transportation system, developed a virtual network to represent it. Then, an optimization model is established; the model took the multimodal transportation network's system optimal performance index (PI) as a goal. Here PI is defined as the linear weighted sum of transport cost and transport time, different cargoes can be entrusted with different weight coefficients, and employed genetic algorithms as a solving algorithm. Finally a practical example is given: the example's result shows that the method discussed in this paper can effectively solve the optimum combination problems of transportation modes in the container multimodal transportation system. This research establishes a theoretical basis for related exploration about container multimodal transportation.