A metaheuristic framework for Nonlinear Capacitated Covering Problems

Several relevant optimization problems can be formulated as generalizations of Capacitated Covering Problems, by considering a cost function that combines a linear term with a nonlinear one. In this paper we introduce the Staircase Capacitated Covering Problem, where the nonlinear term has a staircase shape, and we propose a framework based on a Metaheuristic algorithm for solving problems having this formulation. The performance of the Metaheuristic algorithm in solving the Staircase Capacitated Covering Problem is evaluated on a set of instances derived from an industrial application, and it is compared with a linearized formulation of the problem solved by CPLEX. In particular, the experiments show that the former produces better solutions in the same computing time.