Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 10568–10573

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Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

A hybrid GA–TS algorithm for open vehicle routing optimization of coal

mines material
Shiwei Yu a,b,⇑, Chang Ding a, Kejun Zhu a
a
School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, Hubei, Wuhan 430074, China
b
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100181, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: In the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP), the objective is to minimize the number of vehicles and the
Open vehicle routing problem total distance (or time) traveled. This study primarily focuses on solving an open vehicle routing problem
Genetic algorithms (OVRP) by applying a novel hybrid genetic algorithm and the Tabu search (GA–TS), which combines the
Tabu search GA’s parallel computing and global optimization with TS’s Tabu search skill and fast local search. Firstly,
Hybrid
the proposed algorithm uses natural number coding according to the customer demands and the captiv-
Optimize
Coal mine material
ity of the vehicle for globe optimization. Secondly, individuals of population do TS local search with a cer-
tain degree of probability, namely, do the local routing optimization of all customer sites belong to one
vehicle. The mechanism not only improves the ability of global optimization, but also ensures the speed
of operation. The algorithm was used in Zhengzhou Coal Mine and power Supply Co., Ltd.’s transport
vehicle routing optimization.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Open vehicle routing problem (OVRP) is a special vehicle rout-
ing problem that differs from the well-known vehicle routing prob-
lem (VRP) in that the vehicles do not necessarily return to their
original locations after delivering goods to customers; if they do,
they must visit the same customers in the reverse order (Dantzing
& Ramser, 1959). For example, when coal mines material logistics
and distribution companies have no dedicated distribution team,
or the number of their own distribution vehicle is not enough to
meet the material demands of the mining area, the company had
to rent vehicles. Because the rental vehicles do not need to return
to the depot after the completion of the task, the routing is open.
The OVRP analyzes efficient routes with minimum total cost for a
fleet of vehicles that serve some goods to a given number of cus-
tomers. Each customer is visited exactly once by one vehicle, while
vehicle activity is bounded by capacity constraints, duration con-
straints and time constraints. The OVRP can be seen as a slight var-
iant of the standard CVRP model by simply ignoring the return trip
of the vehicles to the central depot. Therefore, the goal of the OVRP
is to design a set of Hamiltonian paths (open routes) for satisfying
customers’ demand. In terms of the OVRP objective, most research-
ers assume that the cost for hiring an additional vehicle far sur-
⇑ Corresponding author at: School of Economics and Management, China
University of Geosciences, Hubei, Wuhan 430074, China. Tel.: +86 02767883206;
fax: +86 02767883201.
E-mail address: ysw81993@sina.com (S. Yu).
passes any travel cost savings achieved by this additional route
(Fu, Eglese, & Li, 2006). The article of Schrage (1981) which classi-
fies the features encountered in practical routing problems was the
first to distinguish between closed trips traveled by private vehi-
cles, and open trips assigned to common carrier vehicles. Bodin,
Golden, Assad, and Ball (1983) propose the first solution approach
for the OVRP. From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, the OVRP re-
ceived very little attention in the operations research literature.
However, recently OVRP has attracted more and more concern
from practitioners and researchers. Since 2000, several researchers
have used various heuristics and meta-heuristics to solve the OVRP
with some success. Brandão (2004) and Fu, Eglese, and O Li (2005)
carried out a Tabu search (TS) heuristic to solve the OVRP with con-
straints on vehicle capacity and maximum route length. Tarantilis,
Ioannou, Iranoudis, and Prastacos (2005) solved the OVRP by
adopting the LBTA algorithm which proposed the solution of the
multi-depot OVRP (Tarantilis & Kiranoudis, 2002). In Pisinger and
Ropke (2007) presented an adaptive large neighborhood search
heuristic to solve an OVRP. Li, Golden, and Wasil (2007) proposed
a record-to-record travel heuristic and a deterministic variant of
simulated annealing to solve the OVRP. Cao and Lai (2010) consid-
ered the open vehicle routing problem with fuzzy demands.
Zachariadis and Kiranoudis (2010) proposed a local search meta-
heuristic whose moves are statically encoded into static move
descriptor entities to explore the wide neighborhoods.
This paper presents a hybrid adaptive genetic algorithm and
Tabu search (GA–TS) for solving OVRP, The algorithm combines
the GA’s parallel computing and global optimization with TS’s Tabu

0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.02.108
 S. Yu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 10568–10573 10569

search skill and fast local search. Compared with other hybrid In the model, the formula (1) is the objective function which mini-
methods, the main features of the above proposed method are: mizes the total distance traveled; (2) refers to the vehicle capacity
(1) Not all GA populations have access to TS search but by a certain constraints, that is, certain vehicles must deliver goods to custom-
probability, so that the GA–TS can not only guarantee the global ers within vehicle capacity; (3) represents that the every demand
optimization, but also can improve the computational efficiency; node must be served; (4) and (5) ensure that each demand node
(2) TS can only optimize the customer routings which contain is served by exactly the same vehicle.
the right sub-routings. Furthermore, the optimization method
was used in mines material transport vehicle routing optimization
3. A GA–TS optimization algorithm for open vehicle routing
in China Zhengzhou Coal Mine and power Supply Co., Ltd. Through
problem
the experiment, the optimal economical transport routing has been
set up and economic costs have been reduced.
For the capacitated open vehicle routing problem, this paper
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 is the overview of
presents a novel hybrid genetic algorithm and the Tabu search
open vehicle routing problem. A GA–TS optimization algorithm for
(GA–TS), which combines the GA’s parallel computing and global
OVRP is described in detail in Section 3. Section 4 presents the case
optimization with TS’s tabu search skill and fast local search. The
study of China Zhengzhou Coal Mine and power Supply Co., Ltd.’s
main idea is the proposed algorithm implements global optimiza-
mines material transport vehicle routing optimization. Finally in
tion according to the customer demands and the captivity of the
Section 5, a general conclusion is given.
vehicle by natural number coding rules. Then, individuals of popu-
lation do TS local search with a certain degree of probability,
2. The overview of open vehicle routing problem namely, do the local routing optimization of all customer sites be-
long to one vehicle, as shown in Fig. 1.
In the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP), the objective is to
minimize the number of vehicles and then minimize the total dis-
3.1. Encoding
tance (or time) traveled. Each route starts at the depot and ends at
a customer, visiting a number of customers, each once, en route,
Like in most GAs for the TSP, a chromosome simply is a se-
without returning to the depot. The demand of each customer
quence (permutation) s of n customer nodes, without trip delimit-
must be completely fulfilled by a single vehicle. The total demand
ers. For the OVRP, by using natural number encoding method (or
served by each vehicle must not exceed vehicle capacity. Addition-
integer-coded), coded character set consists of natural numbers
ally, in one variant of the problem, the travel time of each vehicle
from the sequence {1, 2, . . . , n}.The integer-coded method is sim-
should not exceed an upper limit.
ple and intuitive. The integer-coded arrangement which includes
OVRP aims at designing a set of routes with the minimum cost
customer nodes and vehicles symbols denotes the route of each
originating from a central depot to satisfy customers’ demand.
vehicle, and is more suitable for OVRP features compared to bin-
Vehicles do not need to return to the depot after completing their
ary-coded or real-coded one. Its specific representation is as fol-
delivery services. The general is described as follows (Sariklis &
lows: there is a distributable task to be completed in the depot.
Powel, 2000): Let n be the number of customers, N = {1, 2,. . . , n}
The task is required to deliver the goods to eight customer nodes.
the set of customers, and N0 = {0, 1,. . . , n} the set of all customers
Demand for each customer point is di = 3t (i = 1, 2, . . . , 8); the
and the depot, which is identified by 0. Let K = {1, 2,. . . , k} be the
capacity of each vehicle is Lmax = 10t. Let 0 be depot and eight inte-
set of vehicle. Let di denote the demand of customer i e N, Lh
gers from 1 to 8 is eight customer nodes, as shown in Fig 2.
denote the load of vehicle h e K. Furthermore max di 6 max Lh .
Firstly, generate an integer sequence between 1 and 8 such as-
Defining
 s = {2, 5, 7, 3, 6, 4, 8, 1}, and then decode the chromosome accord-
1 if poiint iðcustomer or depotÞ is v isited by v ehicle h ing to each customer’s demand and vehicle load capacities. To be
yih ¼ ;
0 otherwise more specific, it should start from the very left, adding one node
every time until it reaches the limit of the load capacity of the vehi-
⁄⁄ cle. Then it is decoded according to the customer’s demand and the
 load capacity of the vehicle, that is to start from the very left, add-
1 if v ehicle h trav els directly from point i to point j
xijh ¼ : ing one node every time until it arrives the limit of the load capac-
0 otherwise
ity of the vehicle. A sub-routing can be obtained according to the
Let cij be the transport cost such as distance, value, time, etc. be- chronological order of the adding nodes. And another sub-routing
tween customers i and j. The mathematical model for open vehicle can be gained if the process is continued from the nodes which
routing problem is as follows: are not joined. The process should be repeated until all the nodes
X
n X
n X
k are included. Finally decode the sequence
minZ ¼ cij xijh ; ð1Þ {0, 2, 5, 7, 0, 3, 6, 4, 0, 8, 1}. The chromosome is decoded into three
i¼0 j¼1 h¼1 vehicle routings.
X
n
Subject to di yih 6 Lh 8h; ð2Þ Vehicle 1: depot ? 2 ? 5 ? 7;
i¼0 Vehicle 2: depot ? 3 ? 6 ? 4;
X
k Vehicle 2: depot ? 8 ? 1.
yih ¼ 1 i ¼ 1; 2; . . . n; ð3Þ
h¼1
Xn 3.2. The selection and reproductive operator
xijh ¼ yjh j ¼ 1; 2; . . . n; 8h; ð4Þ
i¼0 Two parent solutions are selected from the population by the
X
n
tournament method. Two individuals are chosen from the popula-
xijh ¼ yih i ¼ 0; 1; 2; . . . n; 8h; ð5Þ
j¼1
tion at random. The one with the better fitness value is chosen as
the first parent. The process is repeated to obtain a second parent.
xijh ¼ 0 or 1 i; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . n; 8h; ð6Þ
Generally, selection operator of genetic algorithm is implemented
yih ¼ 0 or 1 i; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . n; 8h: ð7Þ
by using roulette-wheel algorithm. The main defect of the
10570 S. Yu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 10568–10573
Fig. 1. General diagram of GA–TS hybrid algorithm to optimize OVRP.
Fig. 2. Code rule.
roulette-wheel algorithm is that local optimal gene dominates the
whole generation, while global optimum would likely be elimi-
nated before emerging. Therefore, the roulette wheel with elitist
election method is considered as the selection mechanism in this
proposed GA–TS algorithm. This method includes two phases. At
first, the elitist strategy was adopted. The generation whose fitness
is within top 10% will be directly copied to the new generation.
Then the rest of chromosome is selected by roulette wheel.
3.3. Crossover operator
Crossover is a mechanism in which the information between
two chromosomes is exchanged randomly. For VRP, crossover
operation should not damage excellent individual patterns which
encode the best routing. Furthermore, it should generate some bet-
ter individual pattern in order to be effective in the solution space
search. Oguz and Cheung (2002) proposed a special crossover oper-
ator for VRP, which integrated three kinds of crossover methods,
namely order crossover (OX) (Davis, 1985), Partially mapped cross-
over (PMX) (Goldberg & Lingle, 1985), and the order-based cross-
over (Syswerda, 1991). The mechanism is applied to the integer
chromosome, which is demonstrated in Fig. 3.
3.4. Mutation operator
The purpose of mutation operation is to make genetic algorithm
obtain local random research capability through varying certain
Fig. 3. An example of crossover.
Fig. 4. An example of mutation.
genes of chromosome. If a chromosome is selected for mutation,
one gene is randomly selected for changing its value. In respect
of integer representations, the process is particularly simple, that
is, to select a pair or two genes randomly to exchange. An example
is shown in Fig. 4.
3.5. Fitness function
In terms of the OVRP objective, most researchers assume that
the cost for hiring an additional vehicle far surpasses any travel
cost savings achieved by this additional route (Fleszar, Osman, &
Hindi, 2009). This paper has designed a formula (8) as the GA–TS
algorithm fitness function. It aims at minimizing the number of
routes and minimizing the routing distance, whereas the second
one only aims at minimizing the distance of the generated route
set.
1
fitness ¼ ; ð8Þ
a  v ehicle no þ p distance
where, vehicle_no is the vehicle number, p_distance is the total rout-
ing distance, while a is an influential coefficient of the vehicle num-
ber which is determined by the length of the actual distance, such
as a e [500, 2000].
3.6. Adaptive probability of crossover and mutation
Traditional crossover and mutation operators base on a ran-
domization mechanism, i.e., generating a cut point, and determin-
ing the bit position shifted by mutation of the solution. But this is
not the case in natural evaluation which is mimicked by the GA.
Actually it is dynamic or adaptive, but not random to renew the
genes of the solution. The slightly modified adaptive probabilities
of crossover and mutation given by Srinivas and Patnaik (1994)
are used in this paper to choose the probability of mutation and
crossover according to the fitness value of the solutions. The
expression of pc and pm are modified as follows:

k1 ðfmax  f 0 Þ=ðfmax  fav g Þ if f 0 P fav g
Pc ¼ ð9Þ
k2 if f 0 < fav g

k3 ðfmax  f =ðfmax  fav g Þ if f > fav g
Pm ¼ ð10Þ
k4 if f < fav g
Here, f is the fitness of an individual, fave is the average fitness value
of the population, and fmax is the maximum fitness value of the pop-
0
ulation respectively. f is the larger fitness values of two crossed
individuals. Generally k1, k2 e [0.8, 1] and k3, k4 e [0.001, 0.1].
 S. Yu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 10568–10573 10571

3.7. Tabu search method status if a move is ‘good enough’ with the compatibility of the goal
of preventing the solution process from cycling.
Tabu search is characterized by an ability to escape the local op-
tima by using a short-term memory of recent solutions. This is
3.8. The adaptive GA–TS algorithm flow
achieved by a strategy of bidding certain moves. The purpose of
classifying a certain move as forbidden (Tabu) is basically to pre-
The basic idea of optimizing OVRP by GA combining TS is to
vent cycling. Moreover, TS permits backtracking to previous solu-
combine the GA’s parallel computing and global optimization with
tions, which may ultimately lead, via a different direction to
TS’s Tabu search skill and fast local search. On the other hand, the
better solutions (Glover, Eric Taillard, & Eric Taillard, 1993). The
algorithm uses natural number coding, in which individuals of
main two components of TS algorithm are the Tabu List (TL)
population do TS local search with a certain degree of probability
restrictions and the Aspiration Level (AV) of the solution associated
so that it not only ensures globally optimization, but also
with the recorded moves.
improves the speed of computing. The more details are described
TL is managed by recording moves (trial solutions) in the order
as follows:
in which they are made. Each time a new element is added to the
‘bottom’ of a list, the oldest element on the list is dropped from the
(1) Initialize parameters: population size pop_size; the max iter-
‘top’. Dauzère-Pérès and Paulli (1997) propose three types of Tabu
ation gens of GAmax gen; adaptive Pc and Pm parameters
lists. During their experiments, only one type of list ensures the
k1, k2, k3, k4; the probability of individuals to TS optimization
best solutions. This Tabu list works as follows: after moving x be-
Pts; the reserved number of best solutions of TS algorithm
tween y and z, (x, y) is added to the Tabu list. A move (x0 , y0 , z0 ) is
best_s; Tabu list length ts_len; Tabu iterations number
forbidden if (x0 , y0 ) or (z0 , x0 ) belongs to the Tabu list. Best sizes of
ts_loop.
TL lie in an intermediate range between these extremes. In some
(2) Generate initial population by coding method.
applications a simple choice of TL size in a range centered seems
(3) Decode and calculate the fitness value.
to be quite effective (Glover, 1990).
(4) Implement genetic operators operations.
Another key issue of TS arises when the move under consider-
(4.1) Select and reproduce according to the fitness value.
ation has been found to be Tabu. Associated with each entry in
(4.2) Calculate the adaptive probability Pc and crossover.
the Tabu list, there is a certain value for the evaluation function
(4.3) Calculate the adaptive probability Pm and mutation.
AV. Roughly speaking, AV criteria are designed to override Tabu
(5) Let p = 1.

Fig. 5. The flowchart of adaptive GA–TS.

10572 S. Yu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 10568–10573

It can infer from the above-mentioned steps that GA and TS

integration can exert their respective merits effectively. A flow-
chart of the describing approach is presented in Fig. 5, while a
chromosome local optimal process by TS is shown in Fig. 6.

4. The case study of mines material transport vehicle routing

optimization

4.1. The background of Zhengzhou Coal Material Supply Co., Ltd.

Fig. 6. An example of chromosome TS local optimization.
(6) If p 6 pop size, take Step (6.1); otherwise go to Step (7).
(6.1) If rand 6 Pts , take Step (6.2) for TS local search; other-
wise go to Step (6.9).
(6.2) Randomly generate initial solution of per sub-routing
of customer nodes according to the decoded chromo-
some and set Tabu list empty.
(6.3) Let k = 1.
(6.4) If k 6 ts loop, take Step (6.5), otherwise go to (6.8).
(6.5) Generate neighborhood solutions by using the current
solution of the 2-opt neighborhood functions and
determine best_s candidate solutions.
(6.6) Does the candidate solution meet the aspiration level
or not? If it meets the level, update the current best
solution and take Step (6.7); otherwise assess the Tabu
attribute of candidate solutions and update Tabu List,
and then take Step (6.7).
(6.7) k = k + 1 and go to Step (6.4).
(6.8) Form a new chromosome according to code of per sub-
routing which is optimized by TS method.
(6.9) p = p + 1, and go to Step (6).
(7) gen = gen + 1;
(8) If gen <= max gen, go to the next generation and carry out a
new GA–TS operations; moreover, stop the iteration, pick
out the best individual, get the best vehicle routing.
China Zhengzhou Coal Mine and power Supply Co., Ltd., is a pro-
fessional institution that provides material and equipments of pro-
duction and maintenance to the 13 subordinate coal mines. The
Company is equipped with a general depot for material supply.
The supplier delivers more than 80% of material demands to the
general depot, where the material is distributed to the 13 subordi-
nate mineral supply stations in accordance with their actual needs.
However, the company does not buy transport vehicles; it has to
rent vehicles of a transportation company whose maximum load
is 10 tons to complete distribution tasks. The transportation ex-
pense is calculated by the amount of vehicles and the actual trans-
portation distance. In order to reduce the operation cost, the
Company has to work out a plan in which the material could be
delivered with the minimum vehicles and transportation distance.
From the above description, it is a typical open vehicle routing
problem. It needs to rent vehicles to deliver minerals to sub-mines,
and then it is not necessary for the rent vehicles to return to the
distribution depot after the completion of the task. The problem
can be described as follows:
The customer node is n = 13; demand for each customer node is
di(i = 1, 2, . . . , 13); the capacity of each vehicle is Lh = 10t; the dis-
tance of demand nodes i to node j is cij and demand for each de-
mand node are shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively.
4.2. The parameters of proposed GA–TS algorithm and optimized
results
The parameters setting of adaptive GA–TS are listed as follows:
population of GA is pop_size = 200; the max iteration generations is

Table 1
The distance between each sub-coal nodes and nodes code (distance units: km).

Nodes Peigou Daping Zhanggou Baiping Micun Chaohua Gaocheng Lugou Laojuntang Jinlong Zhenxin Cuimiao Zhaojiazhai
Code 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Peigou 0 76 72 150 52 52 104 42 62 190 60 90 110
Daping 76 0 106 74 48 83 28 88 58 186 106 86 146
Zhanggou 72 106 0 180 82 82 134 18 92 220 18 120 110
Baiping 150 74 180 0 122 157 56 162 132 172 180 120 215
Micun 52 48 82 122 0 59 76 64 34 162 82 62 117
Chaohua 52 83 82 157 59 0 111 64 69 197 82 97 74
Gaocheng 104 28 134 56 76 111 0 116 106 126 134 114 283
Lugou 42 88 18 162 64 64 116 0 74 202 18 102 112
Laojuntan 62 58 92 132 34 69 106 74 0 172 92 72 127
Jinlong 190 186 220 172 162 197 126 202 172 0 220 110 255
Zhenxin 60 106 18 180 82 82 134 18 92 220 0 120 130
Cuimiao 90 86 120 120 62 97 114 102 72 110 120 0 155
Zhaojiazhai 110 146 110 215 117 74 283 112 127 255 130 155 0
Depot 10 28 23 65 16 16 42 16 21 85 23 35 70

Table 2
The demand of each coal sub-mines material (t).

Nodes Peigou Daping Zhanggou Baiping Micun Chaohua Gaocheng Lugou Laojuntang Jinlong Zhenxin Cuimiao Zhaojiazhai
Demands(t) 4 1.5 3.5 4 4.5 2 3 2.5 1 3.5 2 1.5 2
 S. Yu et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 10568–10573
Table 3
Results comparison for others algorithms.
Algorithms Parameters
GA pop_size = 200; max gen = 500
TS ts_len = 4; ts_loop = 1000; best_s = 32
GA–TS pop_size = 200; max gen = 200; ts_len = 4; ts_loop = 130; best_s = 32
Table 4
The best vehicle route.
Vehicle Vehicle routing
1 Depot(0) ? Peigou(1) ? Chaohua(6) ? Zhaojiazhai(13)
2 Depot(0) ? Laojuntang(9) ? Daping(2) ? Gaocheng(7) ? Baiping(4)
3 Depot(0) ? Micun(5) ? Cuimiao(12) ? Jinlong (10)
4 Depot(0) ? Lugou(8) ? Zhenxin (11) ? Zhanggou(3)
Table 5
The number of vehicles and costs comparison before and after optimization.
Number of vehicles Costs (yuan RMB)
Before optimization 5 12500.00
After optimization 4 8700.00
max gen = 200; the parameters of adaptive probability of crossover
and mutation are k1 = k2 = 0.3, k3 = k4 = 0.1; the number of service
sub-coal mines CityNum = 13, and the best solution of TS is
best_s = ceil (0.4 ⁄ 13 ⁄ (13  1)/2) = 32; Tabu list length is ts_len = -
ceil (CityNum ^ 0.5) = 4; Tabu iteration loops is ts_loop = 10 ⁄ City-
Num = 130; the probability of individuals to TS optimization is
Pts = 0.6; the influential coefficient of the vehicle number is
a = 1000. Programs are made in Matlab7.0 on a HP notebook with
a T5500 CPU core, Windows XP, and 1 GB of memory. When the
training reaches the max gen, the best fitness value is
2.2031 e004, and optimal number of rental vehicles is 4 U and
the most economical distance is 539. The best fitness value VS gen-
erations is shown in Fig. 6. The results comparison for the other
methods is list in the Table 3, the best vehicle routing is shown
in Table 4, and the number of vehicles and costs comparison before
and after optimization is shown in Table 5.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, a hybrid adaptive genetic algorithm and Tabu
Search (GA–TS) for solving OVRP is proposed. On the first hand,
the method combines the GA’s parallel computing, global optimi-
zation with TS fast local search. On the other hand, by using integer
number coding, individuals with a certain degree of probability of
TS local search, rather than the entire populations of all individuals,
have access to TS optimization, so that the GA–TS not only ensures
the overall optimization, but also improves the speed of operation.
Finally, the algorithm was used in China Zhengzhou Coal Mine and
power Supply Co., Ltd.’s mines material transport vehicle routing
optimization. Through the application of the GA–TS, the optimal
economical transport routing has been obtained and economic
costs have been saved.
10573
Best solution Computing time (s)
543 126.16
561 130.82
539 107.04
Acknowledgement
This research was partly supported by Humanities and Social
Sciences Fund, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of
China, the Research Foundation Outstanding Young Teachers,
China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) CUGQNW0901, and the
Special Fund for Basic Scientific Research of Central Colleges, China
University of Geosciences (Wuhan).
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