Route reliability based simulation model for HMA delivery in urban areas

Abstract

Planning the delivery of hot mixture of asphalt (HMA) is challenging task, especially when the delivery routes pass through urban areas. Trend in development of recent planning and optimization models are simulation based. In this paper authors present a simulation model which is focused on routes’ reliabilities. As an optimization problem the model is structured as a combination of the well-known optimization problems (i.e. transportation and vehicle routing problem). The model was tested on a small scale case study problem of HMA delivery in city of Osijek. The results have proved that the model has the potential to become a useful planning and optimization tool for solving such problems.