A SQP Method for Inequality Constrained Optimization

Abstract In this paper, a new SQP method for inequality constrained optimization is proposed and the globalconvergence is obtained under very mild conditions.     

A Globally and Superlinearly Convergent SQP Algorithm for Nonlinear Constrained Optimization

Based on a continuously differentiable exact penalty function and a regularization technique for dealing with the inconsistency of subproblems in the SQP method, we present a new SQP algorithm for nonlinear constrained optimization problems. The proposed algorithm incorporates automatic adjustment rules for the choice of the parameters and makes use of an approximate directional derivative of the merit function to avoid the need to evaluate second order derivatives of the problem functions. Under mild assumptions the algorithm is proved to be globally convergent, and in particular the superlinear convergence rate is established without assuming that the strict complementarity condition at the solution holds. Numerical results reported show that the proposed algorithm is promising.     

Generalized monotone line search SQP algorithm for constrained minimax problems

In this article, non-linear minimax problems with general constraints are discussed. By means of solving one quadratic programming an improved direction is yielded and a second-order correction direction can also be at hand via one system of linear equations. So a new algorithm for solving the discussed problems is presented. In connection with a special merit function, the generalized monotone line search is used to yield the step size at each iteration. Under mild conditions, we can ensure global and superlinear convergence. Finally, some numerical experiments are operated to test our algorithm, and the results demonstrate that it is promising.     

一个等式约束问题的SQP方法及其收敛性

本文提出一个SQP算法,其效益函数为Flether^[1]提出的连续可微精确罚函数。该算法具有全局收敛性和超线性收敛速度,并且能自动调节罚参数,能有效地处理计算搜索方向的二次子规划的不可行问题。     

A cautious BFGS update for reduced Hessian SQP

In this paper, we introduce a cautious BFGS (CBFGS) update criterion in the reduced Hessian sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method. An attractive property of this update criterion is that the generated iterative matrices are always positive definite. Under mild conditions, we get the global convergence of the reduced Hessian SQP method. In particular, the second order sufficient condition is not necessary for the global convergence of the method. Furthermore, we show that if the second order sufficient condition holds at an accumulation point, then the reduced Hessian SQP method with CBFGS update reduces to the reduced Hessian SQP method with ordinary BFGS update. Consequently, the local behavior of the proposed method is the same as the reduced Hessian SQP method with BFGS update. The presented preliminary numerical experiments show the good performance of the method. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China via grant 10671060 and 10471060.     

A modified SQP algorithm for minimax problems

In this paper, a modified nonmonotone line search SQP algorithm for nonlinear minimax problems is presented. During each iteration of the proposed algorithm, a main search direction is obtained by solving a reduced quadratic program (QP). In order to avoid the Maratos effect, a correction direction is generated by solving the reduced system of linear equations. Under mild conditions, the global and superlinear convergence can be achieved. Finally, some preliminary numerical results are reported.     

等式约束优化一个新的SQP算法

提出了一个处理等式约束优化问题新的SQP算法,该算法通过求解一个增广Lagrange函数的拟Newton方法推导出一个等式约束二次规划子问题,从而获得下降方向．罚因子具有自动调节性,并能避免趋于无穷．为克服Maratos效应采用增广Lagrange函数作为效益函数并结合二阶步校正方法．在适当的条件下,证明算法是全局收敛的,并且具有超线性收敛速度．     

A globally convergent method for nonlinear programming

Recently developed Newton and quasi-Newton methods for nonlinear programming possess only local convergence properties. Adopting the concept of the damped Newton method in unconstrained optimization, we propose a stepsize procedure to maintain the monotone decrease of an exact penalty function. In so doing, the convergence of the method is globalized.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ENG-75-10486.     

An improved SQP algorithm for inequality constrained optimization

In this paper, the feasible type SQP method is improved. A new algorithm is proposed to solve nonlinear inequality constrained problem, in which a new modified method is presented to decrease the computational complexity. It is required to solve only one QP subproblem with only a subset of the constraints estimated as active per single iteration. Moreover, a direction is generated to avoid the Maratos effect by solving a system of linear equations. The theoretical analysis shows that the algorithm has global and superlinear convergence under some suitable conditions. In the end, numerical experiments are given to show that the method in this paper is effective.This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (No. 10261001) and Guangxi Science Foundation (No. 0236001 and 0249003) of China. Acknowledgement.We would like to thank one anonymous referee for his valuable comments and suggestions, which greatly improved the quality of this paper.     

A New Superlinearly Convergent SQP Algorithm for Nonlinear Minimax Problems

In this paper, the nonlinear minimax problems are discussed. By means of the Sequential Quadratic Programming （SQP）, a new descent algorithm for solving the problems is presented. At each iteration of the proposed algorithm, a main search direction is obtained by solving a Quadratic Programming （QP） which always has a solution. In order to avoid the Maratos effect, a correction direction is obtained by updating the main direction with a simple explicit formula. Under mild conditions without the strict complementarity, the global and superlinear convergence of the algorithm can be obtained. Finally, some numerical experiments are reported.     

An SQP-type algorithm for nonlinear second-order cone programs

We propose an SQP-type algorithm for solving nonlinear second-order cone programming (NSOCP) problems. At every iteration, the algorithm solves a convex SOCP subproblem in which the constraints involve linear approximations of the constraint functions in the original problem and the objective function is a convex quadratic function. Those subproblems can be transformed into linear SOCP problems, for which efficient interior point solvers are available. We establish global convergence and local quadratic convergence of the algorithm under appropriate assumptions. We report numerical results to examine the effectiveness of the algorithm. This work was supported in part by the Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.     

Global Convergence of a Robust Smoothing SQP Method for Semi-Infinite Programming

The semi-infinite programming (SIP) problem is a program with infinitely many constraints. It can be reformulated as a nonsmooth nonlinear programming problem with finite constraints by using an integral function. Due to the nondifferentiability of the integral function, gradient-based algorithms cannot be used to solve this nonsmooth nonlinear programming problem. To overcome this difficulty, we present a robust smoothing sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm for solving the nonsmooth nonlinear programming problem. At each iteration of the algorthm, we need to solve only a quadratic program that is always feasible and solvable. The global convergence of the algorithm is established under mild conditions. Numerical results are given. Communicated by F. Giannessi His work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council His work was supported by the Australian Research Council.     

求解一类特殊非光滑极大值函数方程的光滑保守DPRP共轭梯度法

对一类特殊极大值函数非光滑方程问题的方法进行了研究, 利用极大值函数和绝对值函数的光滑函数对提出的非光滑方程问题进行转化, 提出了一种光滑保守DPRP共轭梯度法. 在一般的条件下, 给出了光滑保守DPRP共轭梯度法的全局收敛性, 最后给出相关的数值实验表明方法的有效性.     

An exact penalty function algorithm for optimal control problems with control and terminal equality constraints,part 1

The presence of control constraints, because they are nondifferentiable in the space of control functions, makes it difficult to cope with terminal equality constraints in optimal control problems. Gradient-projection algorithms, for example, cannot be employed easily. These difficulties are overcome in this paper by employing an exact penalty function to handle the cost and terminal equality constraints and using the control constraints to define the space of permissible search directions in the search-direction subalgorithm. The search-direction subalgorithm is, therefore, more complex than the usual linear program employed in feasible-directions algorithms. The subalgorithm approximately solves a convex optimal control problem to determine the search direction; in the implementable version of the algorithm, the accuracy of the approximation is automatically increased to ensure convergence.This work was supported by the United Kingdom Science Research Council, by the US Army Research Office, Contract No. DAAG-29-73-C-0025, and by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. ENG-73-08214-A01.     

An algorithm for solving global optimization problems with nonlinear constraints

In this paper we propose an algorithm using only the values of the objective function and constraints for solving one-dimensional global optimization problems where both the objective function and constraints are Lipschitzean and nonlinear. The constrained problem is reduced to an unconstrained one by the index scheme. To solve the reduced problem a new method with local tuning on the behavior of the objective function and constraints over different sectors of the search region is proposed. Sufficient conditions of global convergence are established. We also present results of some numerical experiments.     

Exact penalty function algorithm with simple updating of the penalty parameter

A new globally convergent algorithm for minimizing an objective function subject to equality and inequality constraints is presented. The algorithm determines a search direction by solving a quadratic programming subproblem, which always has an optimal solution, and uses an exact penalty function to compute the steplength along this direction through an Armijo-type scheme. The special structure of the quadratic subproblem is exploited to construct a new and simple method for updating the penalty parameter. This method may increase or reduce the value of the penalty parameter depending on some easily performed tests. A new method for updating the Hessian of the Lagrangian is presented, and a Q-superlinear rate of convergence is established.This work was supported in part by the British Council and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico & Tecnologico/CNPq, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.The authors are very grateful to Mr. Lam Yeung for his invaluable assistance in computing the results and to a reviewer for constructive advice.     

An algorithm for a class of nonlinear complementarity problems with non-Lipschitzian functions

In this paper, we focus on solving a class of nonlinear complementarity problems with non-Lipschitzian functions. We first introduce a generalized class of smoothing functions for the plus function. By combining it with Robinson's normal equation, we reformulate the complementarity problem as a family of parameterized smoothing equations. Then, a smoothing Newton method combined with a new nonmonotone line search scheme is employed to compute a solution of the smoothing equations. The global and local superlinear convergence of the proposed method is proved under mild assumptions. Preliminary numerical results obtained applying the proposed approach to nonlinear complementarity problems arising in free boundary problems are reported. They show that the smoothing function and the nonmonotone line search scheme proposed in this paper are effective.     

A feasible descent SQP algorithm for general constrained optimization without strict complementarity

In this paper, a class of optimization problems with equality and inequality constraints is discussed. Firstly, the original problem is transformed to an associated simpler problem with only inequality constraints and a parameter. The later problem is shown to be equivalent to the original problem if the parameter is large enough (but finite), then a feasible descent SQP algorithm for the simplified problem is presented. At each iteration of the proposed algorithm, a master direction is obtained by solving a quadratic program (which always has a feasible solution). With two corrections on the master direction by two simple explicit formulas, the algorithm generates a feasible descent direction for the simplified problem and a height-order correction direction which can avoid the Maratos effect without the strict complementarity, then performs a curve search to obtain the next iteration point. Thanks to the new height-order correction technique, under mild conditions without the strict complementarity, the globally and superlinearly convergent properties are obtained. Finally, an efficient implementation of the numerical experiments is reported.     

A smoothing-type algorithm for solving nonlinear complementarity problems with a non-monotone line search

The smoothing-type algorithm has been successfully applied to solve various optimization problems. In general, the smoothing-type algorithm is designed based on some monotone line search. However, in order to achieve better numerical results, the non-monotone line search technique has been used in the numerical computations of some smoothing-type algorithms. In this paper, we propose a smoothing-type algorithm for solving the nonlinear complementarity problem with a non-monotone line search. We show that the proposed algorithm is globally and locally superlinearly convergent under suitable assumptions. The preliminary numerical results are also reported.     

An algorithm of sequential systems of linear equations for nonlinear optimization problems with arbitrary initial point

For current sequential quadratic programming (SQP) type algorithms, there exist two problems: (i) in order to obtain a search direction, one must solve one or more quadratic programming subproblems per iteration, and the computation amount of this algorithm is very large. So they are not suitable for the large-scale problems; (ii) the SQP algorithms require that the related quadratic programming subproblems be solvable per iteration, but it is difficult to be satisfied. By using ε-active set procedure with a special penalty function as the merit function, a new algorithm of sequential systems of linear equations for general nonlinear optimization problems with arbitrary initial point is presented. This new algorithm only needs to solve three systems of linear equations having the same coefficient matrix per iteration, and has global convergence and local superlinear convergence. To some extent, the new algorithm can overcome the shortcomings of the SQP algorithms mentioned above. Project partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Tianyuan Foundation of China.