Some experiments with simulated annealing techniques for packing problems

Experiments with a variety of combinatorial optimisation problems have shown that the simulated annealing algorithm is an effective local search heuristic method. The basic requirements of the algorithm are a neighbourhood structure on the set of feasible solutions and a number of parameters which govern the acceptance or rejection of new solutions generated during the search. The quality of the solution is very sensitive to both these factors. This paper is concerned with the application of the simulated annealing approach to packing problems and describes a series of experiments carried out to ascertain the effectiveness of the method for such problems and the most appropriate neighbourhood structure to use and the best parameters to apply.