Minimize Fuel Consumption for Vehicle Routing Problem Considering Urban Traffic Congestion Case Study: A Distribution Company in Isfahan

Transportation dedicates remarkable part of national gross production in every countries and a large part of fuel consumption occurs in this sector. For this reason, in recent years, many attempts have been made to reduce fuel consumption in vehicle routing problem. Vehicle routing problem is one of the important management problems in logistics and distribution basis. In this paper, factors affecting fuel consumption of vehicle routing are comprehensively discussed and by taking into account of factors such as vehicle load and velocity, distance traversed, road gradient and urban traffic congestion, fuel consumption optimization of vehicle routing problem is considered. For this purpose, Due to the factors mentioned, a non-linear mathematical model is presented to reduce fuel consumption. Considering to this issue that proposed problem is NP-hard, to solve the proposed model, an improved firefly algorithm is presented and compared with standard firefly algorithm. By improving the solutions about 2.5% in average, the results demonstrate the efficiency of proposed algorithm. Furthermore, the new model causes reduction of fuel consumption about 13% in average for samples. Finally a distribution company in Isfahan is considered; results show about 15% reduction in fuel consumption.