HAPE3D—a new constructive algorithm for the 3D irregular packing problem

We propose a new constructive algorithm, called HAPE3 D, which is a heuristic algorithm based on the principle of minimum total potential energy for the 3D irregular packing problem, involving packing a set of irregularly shaped polyhedrons into a box-shaped container with fixed width and length but unconstrained height. The objective is to allocate all the polyhedrons in the container, and thus minimize the waste or maximize profit. HAPE3 D can deal with arbitrarily shaped polyhedrons, which can be rotated around each coordinate axis at different angles. The most outstanding merit is that HAPE3 D does not need to calculate no-fit polyhedron(NFP), which is a huge obstacle for the 3D packing problem. HAPE3 D can also be hybridized with a meta-heuristic algorithm such as simulated annealing. Two groups of computational experiments demonstrate the good performance of HAPE3 D and prove that it can be hybridized quite well with a meta-heuristic algorithm to further improve the packing quality.