Constraint handling based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm for aircraft landing scheduling

Aircraft landing scheduling, which is to decide landing times for a set of planes, is a multiobjective optimization problem with lots of constraints. It is difficult to be dealt with by multiobjective evolutionary algorithms which use merely general constraint handling methods. In this paper, an effective constraint handling method is specially designed first; then a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm using that method, named EACH, is presented to solve the aircraft landing scheduling problem. Comparative experiments show that the problem can not be solved effectively by general constraint handling methods alone; on the contrary, EACH is able to find the feasible region in the search space, obtain the jagged Pareto front, and thereby provide efficient schedule for aircraft landing.