Fuel Consumption optimization for Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls

Transportation and logistics are an important part of a country’s economy. This sector includes a significant share of fuel consumption and emissions. The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is one of the widely studied problems in the logistics literature, and so far, various types of this problem and many innovative and accurate solution methods have been performed for it. Efficient and optimal routing of vehicles is a very important goal in the supply chain. Among the issues raised in this section is the issue of routing vehicles with return transportation. In this research, a new mathematical model is presented for vehicle routing problem with backhauls. The objective function of the proposed model is to reduce fuel consumption and environmental pollutants. In order to solve the problem in small dimensions, the proposed mathematical model is solved using Gems software. considering that the problem is NP-Hard, and in order to solve the problem in large dimensions, a meta-heuristic algorithm based on the electromagnetic algorithm has been presented, and the results have been compared with the results of the SA algorithm and the exact solution