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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Summary: We present a model of the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Split Loads (PDPSL), in which a load may be serviced by multiple vehicles. We find the upper bound on the benefit of split loads and determine the load sizes that are most likely to be split. A heuristic is developed for solving large size problems, and experimental results are presented in support of the theoretical findings. The heuristic is applied to a real world example, and the conditions that limit the benefit of split loads are described. Finally, an exact formulation of a simplified version of the PDPSL is presented, with experimental results described for smaller scale problems.
