Empty Container Cooperative Reposition between Railway Container Freight Stations Based on Lyapunov Optimization
The imbalance between the supply and demand of railway empty containers leads to the cooperative reposition of empty containers between multiple container freight stations.With the aim function of minimizing the total cost of empty reposition in the entire transportation network within the planned period,this paper established an optimization model of multi-period empty container reposition according to the dynamic and real-time characteristics of empty container reposition.This model was a global optimization problem,so it was difficult to solve directly.Therefore,the Lyapunov optimization method was utilized to simplify the model.It was transformed from a complex global optimization problem to several single period problems.The transformed problem was theoretically equivalent to the original problem.Mathematical software was used to solve the simplified model,and the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed model were verified by numerical analysis,which realized the optimal dynamic reposition of empty containers between multiple railway container freight stations within the planned period.