An Exact Solution Approach for the Maximum Multicommodity K-splittable Flow Problem

Abstract

This talk concerns the NP-hard Maximum Multicommodity k-splittable Flow Problem (MMCkFP) in which each commodity may use at most k paths between its origin and its destination. A new branch-and-cut-and-price algorithm is presented. The master problem is a two-index formulation of the MMCkFP and the pricing problem is the shortest path problem with forbidden paths. A new branching strategy forcing and forbidding the use of certain paths is developed. The new branch-and-cut-and-price algorithm is computationally evaluated and compared to results from the literature. The new algorithm shows very promising performance by outperforming existing algorithms for several instances