A two-phase method for compaction path planning and control of the impact roller

Compaction efficiency and quality are extraordinarily significant for branch-line airport construction engineering. However, a human-determined compaction path is generally adopted during the compaction, negatively impacting compaction efficiency and quality. A two-phase approach to the compaction path is proposed to address the problem. The first phase focuses on the establishment of a model to optimize the impact roller's complete-coverage compaction path (CCCP) to improve compaction efficiency. In this phase, the optimization problem of the CCCP is equivalent to the traveling salesman problem (TSP). Next, the optimization of the CCCP is formulated and solved as a binary integer programming problem. Finally, a method for determining the optimal traversal compaction sequence is proposed to obtain the optimal CCCP based on the secondary development of the Gurobi optimizer. In the second phase, to guarantee the compaction quality, the path navigation modulus is designed to precisely control the compaction path. Combining the compaction path planning with the path control, an integrated system is developed to provide a better service for practical earthwork compaction engineering in airport construction. The results of the simulation experiment and field experiment indicate that the CCCP determined by the proposed optimization method in the first phase can improve the compaction efficiency compared to the human-determined compaction path. In addition, the developed system can effectively generate the CCCP. Meanwhile, the developed system can provide a visual path navigation and precise path control during the compaction to ensure the compaction quality, verifying that the proposed method can offer a novel idea for compaction path control.