Hybrid binary ant colony algorithm for strongly heterogeneous container loading problem

Aiming at the strongly heterogeneous container loading problem, a mixed ant colony algorithm is designed. The solution of problem is divided in two parts, the priority of the goods and the goods´ state. Based on heuristic rules, the larger goods have priority to pack in container, so volume is considered as heuristic information. The sequence that ant has searched crosses with historical optimal sequence. The optimal one among the three sequences is choose as the wanted sequence. In order to avoid pheromone over-rapid saturated, pheromone is updated by adopting two volatile coefficients. The complexity of the algorithm is analyzed. Through testing three examples, the space utilization is high by using this algorithm.