An Intelligent Scheduling System and Hybrid Optimization Algorithm for Ship Locks of the Three Gorges Hub on the Yangtze River

The ship lock system of the Three Gorges Hub(TGH) stands out as the most intricate navigation system for ships passing through dams, which is composed of the the world’s largest ship lock and ship lift. It operates with features like multi-dam configurations, multi-chambers, multi-operation modes and batch processing. This paper addresses the complex challenge of optimizing the lock schedule, ship entry timings, and ship placements within the lock chamber. By analyzing navigational rules, operational characteristics, and existing problems of TGH, this research introduces an intelligent scheduling system framework. With the incorporation of multiple objectives and constraints, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming(MINLP) model is formulated. Subsequently, a hybrid intelligent algorithm based on simulated annealing and heuristic search is constructed to achieve the optimization of the lock schedule. The algorithm efficacy is validated using the real-world data from TGH.