The lowest merit index in the branch-and-bound algorithm of structure a railway network with application.

The Network Design Problem (NDP) is the optimum network expansion planning problem that the branching ought to be involved within the network for obtaining the lowest merit index. This paper aims to apply the branch and bound algorithm to obtain the optimal solution in extend railway (Basrah-faw) project. Numerical experiments show that our algorithm is superior to previous algorithms in terms of both computation time and solution quality. The finding shows that representing the project through a network would facilitate the work of the executing company in calculating the shortest possible time as well as we obtain two paths with lower merit index which gives the flexibility and applicability of our algorithm for the decision maker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]