Improved hybrid simulated annealing algorithm for navigation scheduling for the two dams of the Three Gorges Project

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the optimal navigation co-scheduling (NCS) for the two dams of the Three Gorges Project in China, i.e., the Three Gorges Dam and the Gezhouba Dam. The co-scheduling includes the operational scheduling for all five locks of the two dams, and the dispatching scheduling to ships applying to pass the dams. Compared with the flexible manufacturing system (FMS), a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model is designed for the NCS, and an improved hybrid algorithm of simulated annealing and local search is addressed to obtain optimal scheduling. Experiments based on real historical execution data show that the approach is feasible.