An Industrial Park Layout Design Method Considering Pipeline Length Based on FLUTE Algorithm

Abstract The layout of an industrial park can significantly impact its economic benefit and safety. In terms of economy, a good layout means shorter pipeline length, leading to lower pipeline cost and material transport cost. In practice, the layout of an industrial park is manually determined based on experience according to the relationship of upstream and downstream. In academia, few systematic programming method has been proposed, and most of them only consider one-to-one connection pattern, pipeline networks with multi-branch are ignored. For systematic programming method, it has always been difficult to calculate the minimum length of pipeline network with multi-branch in an industrial park. FLUTE (Fast Lookup Table Based Wirelength Estimation Technique) algorithm is an accurate and fast method to solve rectilinear Steiner minimum tree problem based on a lookup table. In this paper, a novel method based on FLUTE algorithm is came up to calculate the minimum length of steam pipeline network in an industrial park and determine the layout. The total pipeline cost, which includes steam pipeline cost and material pipeline cost, is set as an objective function. Genetic algorithm is employed to optimize the layout of several plants in an industrial park. In the case study, it can be seen that, the calculation time is significantly reduced, and a better layout is obtained.