Solving 2D strip packing problem using fruit fly optimization algorithm

Two dimensional strip-packing problem (2DSPP) consists of packing a set of rectangular items on one strip with a restriction of a maximal width and height. Because the conventional algorithms are still sub-optimal, the researchers tend towards searching for more successful alternative algorithms to solve 2DSPP. The fruit fly optimization algorithm (FOA), which is one of the recently proposed meta-heuristic algorithms, has been successfully applied on many engineering and mathematical problems. This study presents an implementation of FOA for solving non-oriented 2DSPP. The aim of the study is to find the optimal sequence of the rectangles in a strip, and then to place the rectangles by bottom left fill approach to have the optimal height within a fixed width box. The experiments are concluded on online available set of 2DSPP test problems. The preliminary results of the study are compared with the results of some conventional or heuristic approaches which use the same problem set. The experimental results show the promising results are obtained by FOA on solving 2DSPPs.