Integrated transportation system design optimization

Traditionally, the design of a transportation system has focused on either the vehicle design or the network flow, assuming the other as given. However, to define a system level architecture for a transportation system, it is advantageous to expand the system boundary during the design process to include the network definition, the vehicle specifications, and the operations, which couple the vehicle(s) and the network. The integrated transportation system formulation developed in this thesis examines these fundamental components by classifying the decisions required to define them and concurrently optimizing the entire design problem, resulting in a more efficient transportation architecture. The integrated transportation system design models are developed for an air and a space transportation system and an example problem is implemented for each. The integrated air transportation system example of an overnight package delivery network quantifies at least a ten percent improvement in cost over traditional optimization approaches. The formulation for a space transportation system first requires the definition of a space network which is constructed by extending time expanded networks to account for astrodynamic relationships.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Taylor, Christine P. (Christine Pia), 1979-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Olivier de Weck.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38644

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38644