Flight test scheduling: A generic model, lower bounds, and iterated local search

Flight tests play a critical role in the R&D process for new aircraft as they help verify the airworthiness and capabilities and expose design and manufacturing defects. During the test course, a large number of tasks need to be scheduled appropriately so that the flight tests can be completed with minimum cost and high efficiency. Therefore, there is a strong need for developing an efficient method that can generate high-quality test schedules. In this paper, we study flight test scheduling to minimize the number of required test flights, thereby decreasing the cost and time required during the entire test course. We establish a mixed-integer programming model to formally describe the problem, propose several computationally efficient lower bounds to help verify the quality of obtained solutions, and develop an iterated local search algorithm for generating a high-quality solution in an effective manner. Comprehensive computational experiments are performed to demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed algorithm. We report some general managerial insights based on the obtained computational results.