Shape and topology optimization for elliptic boundary value problems using a piecewise constant level set method

The aim of this paper is to propose a variational piecewise constant level set method for solving elliptic shape and topology optimization problems. The original model is approximated by a two-phase optimal shape design problem by the ersatz material approach. Under the piecewise constant level set framework, we first reformulate the two-phase design problem to be a new constrained optimization problem with respect to the piecewise constant level set function. Then we solve it by the projection Lagrangian method. A gradient-type iterative algorithm is presented. Comparisons between our numerical results and those obtained by level set approaches show the effectiveness, accuracy and efficiency of our algorithm.     

A new greedy algorithm for the quadratic assignment problem

The classical greedy algorithm for discrete optimization problems where the optimal solution is a maximal independent subset of a finite ground set of weighted elements, can be defined in two ways which are dual to each other. The Greedy-In where a solution is constructed from the empty set by adding the next best element, one at a time, until we reach infeasibility, and the Greedy-Out where starting from the ground set we delete the next worst element, one at a time, until feasibility is reached. It is known that while the former provides an approximation ratio for maximization problems, its worst case performance is not bounded for minimization problems, and vice-versa for the later. However the Greedy-Out algorithm requires an oracle for checking the existence of a maximal independent subset which for most discrete optimization problems is a difficult task. In this work we present a Greedy-Out algorithm for the quadratic assignment problem by providing a combinatorial characterization of its solutions.     

Discrete Approximation Scheme in Distributionally Robust Optimization

Discrete approximation, which has been the prevailing scheme in stochastic programming in the past decade, has been extended to distributionally robust optimization (DRO) recently. In this paper, we conduct rigorous quantitative stability analysis of discrete approximation schemes for DRO, which measures the approximation error in terms of discretization sample size. For the ambiguity set defined through equality and inequality moment conditions, we quantify the discrepancy between the discretized ambiguity sets and the original set with respect to the Wasserstein metric. To establish the quantitative convergence, we develop a Hoffman error bound theory with Hoffman constant calculation criteria in a infinite dimensional space, which can be regarded as a byproduct of independent interest. For the ambiguity set defined by Wasserstein ball and moment conditions combined with Wasserstein ball, we present similar quantitative stability analysis by taking full advantage of the convex property inherently admitted by Wasserstein metric. Efficient numerical methods for specifically solving discrete approximation DRO problems with thousands of samples are also designed. In particular, we reformulate different types of discrete approximation problems into a class of saddle point problems with completely separable structures. The stochastic primal-dual hybrid gradient (PDHG) algorithm where in each iteration we update a random subset of the sampled variables is then amenable as a solution method for the reformulated saddle point problems. Some preliminary numerical tests are reported.     

GASUB: finding global optima to discrete location problems by a genetic-like algorithm

In many discrete location problems, a given number s of facility locations must be selected from a set of m potential locations, so as to optimize a predetermined fitness function. Most of such problems can be formulated as integer linear optimization problems, but the standard optimizers only are able to find one global optimum. We propose a new genetic-like algorithm, GASUB, which is able to find a predetermined number of global optima, if they exist, for a variety of discrete location problems. In this paper, a performance evaluation of GASUB in terms of its effectiveness (for finding optimal solutions) and efficiency (computational cost) is carried out. GASUB is also compared to MSH, a multi-start substitution method widely used for location problems. Computational experiments with three types of discrete location problems show that GASUB obtains better solutions than MSH. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm finds global optima in all tested problems, which is shown by solving those problems by Xpress-MP, an integer linear programing optimizer (21). Results from testing GASUB with a set of known test problems are also provided.     

Descent approaches for quadratic bilevel programming

The bilevel programming problem involves two optimization problems where the data of the first one is implicitly determined by the solution of the second. In this paper, we introduce two descent methods for a special instance of bilevel programs where the inner problem is strictly convex quadratic. The first algorithm is based on pivot steps and may not guarantee local optimality. A modified steepest descent algorithm is presented to overcome this drawback. New rules for computing exact stepsizes are introduced and a hybrid approach that combines both strategies is discussed. It is proved that checking local optimality in bilevel programming is a NP-hard problem.Support of this work has been provided by INIC (Portugal) under Contract 89/EXA/5, by FCAR (Québec), and by NSERC and DND-ARP (Canada).     

Computing generalized higher-order Voronoi diagrams on triangulated surfaces

We present an algorithm for computing exact shortest paths, and consequently distance functions, from a generalized source (point, segment, polygonal chain or polygonal region) on a possibly non-convex triangulated polyhedral surface. The algorithm is generalized to the case when a set of generalized sites is considered, providing their distance field that implicitly represents the Voronoi diagram of the sites. Next, we present an algorithm to compute a discrete representation of the distance function and the distance field. Then, by using the discrete distance field, we obtain the Voronoi diagram of a set of generalized sites (points, segments, polygonal chains or polygons) and visualize it on the triangulated surface. We also provide algorithms that, by using the discrete distance functions, provide the closest, furthest and k-order Voronoi diagrams and an approximate 1-Center and 1-Median.     

A-posteriori residual bounds for Arnoldi’s methods for nonsymmetric eigenvalue problems

Convergence of the implicitly restarted Arnoldi (IRA) method for nonsymmetric eigenvalue problems has often been studied by deriving bounds for the angle between a desired eigenvector and the Krylov projection subspace. Bounds for residual norms of approximate eigenvectors have been less studied and this paper derives a new a-posteriori residual bound for nonsymmetric matrices with simple eigenvalues. The residual vector is shown to be a linear combination of exact eigenvectors and a residual bound is obtained as the sum of the magnitudes of the coefficients of the eigenvectors. We numerically illustrate that the convergence of the residual norm to zero is governed by a scalar term, namely the last element of the wanted eigenvector of the projected matrix. Both cases of convergence and non-convergence are illustrated and this validates our theoretical results. We derive an analogous result for implicitly restarted refined Arnoldi (IRRA) and for this algorithm, we numerically illustrate that convergence is governed by two scalar terms appearing in the linear combination which drives the residual norm to zero. We provide a set of numerical results that validate the residual bounds for both variants of Arnoldi methods.     

计算最小奇异组的一个精化调和Lanczos双对角化方法

在很多实际应用中需要计算大规模矩阵的若干个最小奇异组.调和投影方法是计算内部特征对的常用方法,其原理可用于求解大规模奇异值分解问题.本文证明了,当投影空间足够好时,该方法得到的近似奇异值收敛,但近似奇异向量可能收敛很慢甚至不收敛.根据第二作者近年来提出的精化投影方法的原理,本文提出一种精化的调和Lanczos双对角化方法,证明了它的收敛性.然后将该方法与Sorensen提出的隐式重新启动技术相结合,开发出隐式重新启动的调和Lanczos双对角化算法(IRHLB)和隐式重新启动的精化调和Lanczos双对角化算法(IRRHLB).位移的合理选取是算法成功的关键之一,本文对精化算法提出了一种新的位移策略,称之为"精化调和位移".理论分析表明,精化调和位移比IRHLB中所用的调和位移要好,且可以廉价可靠地计算出来.数值实验表明,IRRHLB比IRHLB要显著优越,而且比目前常用的隐式重新启动的Lanczos双对角化方法(IRLB)和精化算法IRRLB更有效.     

不等式约束优化一个基于滤子思想的广义梯度投影算法

讨论非线性不等式约束优化问题, 借鉴于滤子算法思想,提出了一个新型广义梯度投影算法.该方法既不使用罚函数又无真正意义下的滤子.每次迭代通过一个简单的显式广义投影法产生搜索方向,步长由目标函数值或者约束违反度函数值充分下降的Armijo型线搜索产生.算法的主要特点是: 不需要迭代序列的有界性假设;不需要传统滤子算法所必需的可行恢复阶段;使用了ε积极约束集减小计算量.在合适的假设条件下算法具有全局收敛性, 最后对算法进行了初步的数值实验.     

不等式约束最优化无严格互补条件下的快速收敛序列线性方程组算法

本文讨论无严格互补性的非线性不等式约束最优化问题,建立了一个新的序列线性方程组算法。算法每次迭代只需解一个线性方程组或计算一次广义梯度投影,并不要求Lagrange函数的近似Hessian阵正定。在较弱的假设下,证明了算法的整体收敛性、强收敛性、超线性收敛性及二次收敛速度。还对算法进行了有效的数值试验。     

Algorithms for bound constrained quadratic programming problems

Summary We present an algorithm which combines standard active set strategies with the gradient projection method for the solution of quadratic programming problems subject to bounds. We show, in particular, that if the quadratic is bounded below on the feasible set then termination occurs at a stationary point in a finite number of iterations. Moreover, if all stationary points are nondegenerate, termination occurs at a local minimizer. A numerical comparison of the algorithm based on the gradient projection algorithm with a standard active set strategy shows that on mildly degenerate problems the gradient projection algorithm requires considerable less iterations and time than the active set strategy. On nondegenerate problems the number of iterations typically decreases by at least a factor of 10. For strongly degenerate problems, the performance of the gradient projection algorithm deteriorates, but it still performs better than the active set method.Work supported in part by the Applied Mathematical Sciences subprogram of the Office of Energy Research of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract W-31-109-Eng-38     

Algorithm robust for the bicriteria discrete optimization problem

We apply Algorithm Robust to various problems in multiple objective discrete optimization. Algorithm Robust is a general procedure that is designed to solve bicriteria optimization problems. The algorithm performs a weight space search in which the weights are utilized in min-max type subproblems. In this paper, we experiment with Algorithm Robust on the bicriteria knapsack problem, the bicriteria assignment problem, and the bicriteria minimum cost network flow problem. We look at a heuristic variation that is based on controlling the weight space search and has an indirect control on the sample of efficient solutions generated. We then study another heuristic variation which generates samples of the efficient set with quality guarantees. We report results of computational experiments.     

The Gradient Projection Method with Exact Line Search

The gradient projection algorithm for function minimization is often implemented using an approximate local minimization along the projected negative gradient. On the other hand, for some difficult combinational optimization problems, where a starting guess may be far from a solution, it may be advantageous to perform a nonlocal (exact) line search. In this paper we show how to evaluate the piece-wise smooth projection associated with a constraint set described by bounds on the variables and a single linear equation. When the NP hard graph partitioning problem is formulated as a continuous quadratic programming problem, the constraints have this structure.     

Global optimization and simulated annealing

In this paper we are concerned with global optimization, which can be defined as the problem of finding points on a bounded subset of ⁿ in which some real valued functionf assumes its optimal (maximal or minimal) value.We present a stochastic approach which is based on the simulated annealing algorithm. The approach closely follows the formulation of the simulated annealing algorithm as originally given for discrete optimization problems. The mathematical formulation is extended to continuous optimization problems, and we prove asymptotic convergence to the set of global optima. Furthermore, we discuss an implementation of the algorithm and compare its performance with other well-known algorithms. The performance evaluation is carried out for a standard set of test functions from the literature.     

A discrete filled function algorithm for approximate global solutions of max-cut problems

A discrete filled function algorithm is proposed for approximate global solutions of max-cut problems. A new discrete filled function is defined for max-cut problems and the properties of the filled function are studied. Unlike general filled function methods, using the characteristic of max-cut problems, the parameters in proposed filled function need not be adjusted. This greatly increases the efficiency of the filled function method. By combining a procedure that randomly generates initial points for minimization of the filled function, the proposed algorithm can greatly reduce the calculation cost and be applied to large scale max-cut problems. Numerical results on different sizes and densities test problems indicate that the proposed algorithm is efficient and stable to get approximate global solutions of max-cut problems.     

非线性整数规划的一个新的无参数填充函数算法

离散填充函数是一种用于求解多极值优化问题最优解的一种行之有效的方法.已被证明对于求解大规模离散优化问题是有效的.本文基于改进的离散填充函数定义,构造了一个新的无参数填充函数,并在理论上给出了证明,提出了一个新的填充函数算法.该填充函数无需调节参数,而且只需极小化一次目标函数.数值结果表明,该算法是高效的、可行的.     

A provably convergent heuristic for stochastic bicriteria integer programming

We propose a general-purpose algorithm APS (Adaptive Pareto-Sampling) for determining the set of Pareto-optimal solutions of bicriteria combinatorial optimization (CO) problems under uncertainty, where the objective functions are expectations of random variables depending on a decision from a finite feasible set. APS is iterative and population-based and combines random sampling with the solution of corresponding deterministic bicriteria CO problem instances. Special attention is given to the case where the corresponding deterministic bicriteria CO problem can be formulated as a bicriteria integer linear program (ILP). In this case, well-known solution techniques such as the algorithm by Chalmet et al. can be applied for solving the deterministic subproblem. If the execution of APS is terminated after a given number of iterations, only an approximate solution is obtained in general, such that APS must be considered a metaheuristic. Nevertheless, a strict mathematical result is shown that ensures, under rather mild conditions, convergence of the current solution set to the set of Pareto-optimal solutions. A modification replacing or supporting the bicriteria ILP solver by some metaheuristic for multicriteria CO problems is discussed. As an illustration, we outline the application of the method to stochastic bicriteria knapsack problems by specializing the general framework to this particular case and by providing computational examples.     

A discrete filled function algorithm embedded with continuous approximation for solving max-cut problems

In this paper, a discrete filled function algorithm embedded with continuous approximation is proposed to solve max-cut problems. A new discrete filled function is defined for max-cut problems, and properties of the function are studied. In the process of finding an approximation to the global solution of a max-cut problem, a continuation optimization algorithm is employed to find local solutions of a continuous relaxation of the max-cut problem, and then global searches are performed by minimizing the proposed filled function. Unlike general filled function methods, characteristics of max-cut problems are used. The parameters in the proposed filled function need not to be adjusted and are exactly the same for all max-cut problems that greatly increases the efficiency of the filled function method. Numerical results and comparisons on some well known max-cut test problems show that the proposed algorithm is efficient to get approximate global solutions of max-cut problems.     

A discrete artificial bee colony algorithm for the multi-objective flexible job-shop scheduling problem with maintenance activities

This paper presents a novel discrete artificial bee colony (DABC) algorithm for solving the multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem with maintenance activities. Performance criteria considered are the maximum completion time so called makespan, the total workload of machines and the workload of the critical machine. Unlike the original ABC algorithm, the proposed DABC algorithm presents a unique solution representation where a food source is represented by two discrete vectors and tabu search (TS) is applied to each food source to generate neighboring food sources for the employed bees, onlooker bees, and scout bees. An efficient initialization scheme is introduced to construct the initial population with a certain level of quality and diversity. A self-adaptive strategy is adopted to enable the DABC algorithm with learning ability for producing neighboring solutions in different promising regions whereas an external Pareto archive set is designed to record the non-dominated solutions found so far. Furthermore, a novel decoding method is also presented to tackle maintenance activities in schedules generated. The proposed DABC algorithm is tested on a set of the well-known benchmark instances from the existing literature. Through a detailed analysis of experimental results, the highly effective and efficient performance of the proposed DABC algorithm is shown against the best performing algorithms from the literature.     

A CLASS OF TRUST REGION METHODS FOR LINEAR INEQUALITY CONSTRAINED OPTIMIZATION AND ITS THEORY ANALYSIS：I．ALGORITHM AND GLOBAL CONVERGENCE

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