| dc.description.abstract | Operations and procedures for earthwork construction are usually arranged by on-site engineers or site managers in accordance with construction schedule, and taken into considerations the contractual requirements or available resources. These arrangements are normally planned, however, based on experiences and not scientific methods with systematic analyses, comparisons, and assessments. Therefore, the success of earthwork deployment is dependent upon the capability and experiences of site manager; the needs to increase machinery usage rate and to reduce cost has become one of the most crucial topics in the construction industry today.
The premise of study model for this thesis is established upon the earthwork construction within a construction site carried out by excavator and dump truck as typically seen in Taiwan, with considerations given to the cost savings yield from sales of soil types. An integer programming based mathematical optimization model will be established to assist the site manager in comprehensive machinery dispatch planning, in order to increase profit by minimizing the dispatching cost. When there are changes in the external environments and constraints, this study model can update the parameters accordingly to continue the subsequent dispatch of excavator and carrier trucks. In addition, the model will automatically adjust relevant parameters according to the trends of sensitivity of each parameter, in response to the actual dispatching program for excavators and dump truck. In this study, the basic information and restricts of each case determines the set of constraints of each parameter; the data are entered into LINGO 8.0 via EXCEL to obtain the optimal results of overall excavator and truck dispatching cost. This study model is tested with earthwork construction executed by small and medium-sized contractors. The testing results demonstrated good outcomes when compared against the dispatching operations and decisions based on managers’ experiences. Therefore, this study model is an important reference basis, and can be flexibly used in any dispatching planning involving various type of excavators and dump trucks.
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