A Robust Scheduling Optimization Method for Flight Deck Operations of Aircraft Carrier With Ternary Interval Durations

The sortie and recovery operations of the carrier-based aircraft fleet are carried out in a cyclic mode, and there are uncertainties during the flight deck operations, which is the main factor that influences the sustainability of cyclic operations. The robust scheduling problem for flight deck operations (RSPFDO) with uncertain duration is studied in this paper. First, the robust scheduling model of flight deck operations with ternary interval durations is established. In this model, the precedence and resource constraints including personnel, equipment, workstation space, and supply resource are taken into account, and the uncertain duration is modeled as a ternary interval number. Second, to make a proactive plan, serial schedule generation scheme is used to generate baseline schedules, and a robust personnel allocation scheme is designed. In terms of executing schedules, a pre-constrained scheduling policy is proposed to evaluate the ternary interval of makespan. Third, a double-population and self-adaptive differential evolution (DSDE) algorithm is presented to optimize the robust plan, which is embedded in a population-based double justification scheme, self-adaptive selection of mutation and crossover factors, and a chaotic catastrophe operator based on the scouts mode of artificial bee colony algorithm. The validity of the established model and the superiority of the DSDE algorithm are verified by simulations with mission cases and algorithm comparison. The results demonstrate that the proposed robust scheduling method can effectively improve the robustness of the flight deck operations.