A linear relaxation for hub network design problems

In this paper; we consider a network design problem with hub-and-spoke structure. We propose a relaxation technique for the problem where the location of hub nodes is given and decides the allocation of non-hub nodes to one of the hub nodes. We linearize the non-convex quadratic objective function of the original problem, introducing Hitchcock transportation problems defined for each pair of non-hub nodes. We provide two linear relaxation problems, one based on the Hitchcock transportation problems and the other oil the dual Hitchcock transportation problems. We show the tightness of the lower bounds obtained by our formulations by computational experiences.