Construction of Test Problems for Concave Minimization Under Linear and Nonlinear Constraints

This paper presents a method for constructing test problems with known global solutions for concave minimization under linear constraints with an additional convex constraint and for reverse convex programs with an additional convex constraint. The importance of such a construction can be realized from the fact that the well known d.c. programming problem can be formulated in this form. Then, the method is further extended to generate test problems with more than one convex constraint, tight or untight at the global solution.     

Lagrange Duality and Partitioning Techniques in Nonconvex Global Optimization

It is shown that, for very general classes of nonconvex global optimization problems, the duality gap obtained by solving a corresponding Lagrangian dual in reduced to zero in the limit when combined with suitably refined partitioning of the feasible set. A similar result holds for partly convex problems where exhaustive partitioning is applied only in the space of nonconvex variables. Applications include branch-and-bound approaches for linearly constrained problems where convex envelopes can be computed, certain generalized bilinear problems, linearly constrained optimization of the sum of ratios of affine functions, and concave minimization under reverse convex constraints.     

Computational experience using an edge search algorithm for linear reverse convex programs

This paper presents computational experience with a rather straight forward implementation of an edge search algorithm for obtaining the globally optimal solution for linear programs with an additional reverse convex constraint. The paper's purpose is to provide a collection of problems, with known optimal solutions, and performance information for an edge search implementation so that researchers may have some benchmarks with which to compare new methods for reverse convex programs or concave minimization problems. There appears to be nothing in the literature that provides computational experience with a basic edge search procedure. The edge search implementation uses a depth first strategy. As such, this paper's implementation of the edge search algorithm is a modification of Hillestad's algorithm [11]. A variety of test problems is generated by using a modification of the method of Sung and Rosen [20], as well as a new method that is presented in this paper. Test problems presented may be obtained at ftp://newton.ee.ucla.edu/nonconvex/pub/.     

Convex dual for quadratic concave fractional programs

For a fractional program with a quadratic numerator and an arbitrary concave denominator, a new convex dual program is derived. Concepts of conjugate duality are used to obtain an explicit representation of the dual.The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees and the Associate Editor for their comments.     

Some results on the strength of relaxations of multilinear functions

We study approaches for obtaining convex relaxations of global optimization problems containing multilinear functions. Specifically, we compare the concave and convex envelopes of these functions with the relaxations that are obtained with a standard relaxation approach, due to McCormick. The standard approach reformulates the problem to contain only bilinear terms and then relaxes each term independently. We show that for a multilinear function having a single product term, this approach yields the convex and concave envelopes if the bounds on all variables are symmetric around zero. We then review and extend some results on conditions when the concave envelope of a multilinear function can be written as a sum of concave envelopes of its individual terms. Finally, for bilinear functions we prove that the difference between the concave upper bounding and convex lower bounding functions obtained from the McCormick relaxation approach is always within a constant of the difference between the concave and convex envelopes. These results, along with numerical examples we provide, give insight into how to construct strong relaxations of multilinear functions.     

A strong duality theorem for the minimum of a family of convex programs

We produce a duality theorem for the minimum of an arbitrary family of convex programs. This duality theorem provides a single concave dual maximization and generalizes recent work in linear disjunctive programming. Homogeneous and symmetric formulations are studied in some detail, and a number of convex and nonconvex applications are given.This work was partially funded by National Research Council of Canada, Grant No. A4493. Thanks are due to Mr. B. Toulany for many conversations and to Dr. L. MacLean who suggested the chance-constrained model.     

A decomposition-dualization approach for solving constrained convex minimization problems with applications to discretized obstacle problems

Summary In this paper, we shall be concerned with the solution of constrained convex minimization problems. The constrained convex minimization problems are proposed to be transformable into a convex-additively decomposed and almost separable form, e.g. by decomposition of the objective functional and the restrictions. Unconstrained dual problems are generated by using Fenchel-Rockafellar duality. This decomposition-dualization concept has the advantage that the conjugate functionals occuring in the derived dual problem are easily computable. Moreover, the minimum point of the primal constrained convex minimization problem can be obtained from any maximum point of the corresponding dual unconstrained concave problem via explicit return-formulas. In quadratic programming the decomposition-dualization approach considered here becomes applicable if the quadratic part of the objective functional is generated byH-matrices. Numerical tests for solving obstacle problems in ¹ discretized by using piecewise quadratic finite elements and in ² by using the five-point difference approximation are presented.     

On the Construction of Convex and Concave Envelope Formulas for Bilinear and Fractional Functions on Quadrilaterals

Convex and concave envelopes play important roles in various types of optimization problems. In this article, we present a result that gives general guidelines for constructing convex and concave envelopes of functions of two variables on bounded quadrilaterals. We show how one can use this result to construct convex and concave envelopes of bilinear and fractional functions on rectangles, parallelograms and trapezoids. Applications of these results to global optimization are indicated.     

Linearly constrained convex programming as unconstrained differentiable concave programming

Recently, Fang proposed approximating a linear program in Karmarkar's standard form by adding an entropic barrier function to the objective function and using a certain geometric inequality to transform the resulting problem into an unconstrained differentiable concave program. We show that, by using standard duality theory for convex programming, the results of Fang and his coworkers can be strengthened and extended to linearly constrained convex programs and more general barrier functions.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. CCR-91-03804.     

Classifying convex extremum problems over linear topologies having separation properties

It is shown that any convex or concave extremum problem possesses a subsidiary extremum problem which has certain homogeneous properties. Analogous to the given problem, the “homogenized” extremum problem seeks the minimum of a convex function or the maximum of a concave function over a convex domain. By using homogenized extremum problems, new relationships are developed between any given convex extremum problem (P) and a concave extremum problem (P¹) (also having a convex domain), called the “dual” problem of (P). This is achieved by combining all possibilities in tabular form of (1) the values of the extremum functions and (2) the nature of the convex domains including perturbations of all problems (P), (P¹), and each of their respective homogenized extremum problems.This detailed and refined classification is contrasted to the relationships obtainable by combining only the possible values of the extremum functions of the problems (P) and (P¹) and the possible limiting values of these functions stemming from perturbations of the convex constraint domains of (P) and (P¹), respectively.The extremum problems in this paper and classification results are set forth in real topologically paired vector spaces having the Hahn-Banach separation property.     

Post-optimality sensitivity analysis in abstract spaces with applications to continuous-time programming problems

The programming problem under consideration consists in maximizing a concave objective functional, subject to convex operator inequality contraints. The assumptions include the existence of an optimum solution, Fréchet differentiability of all operators involved, and the existence of the topological complement of the null space of the Fréchet derivative of the constraint operator. It is shown that the rate of change of the optimum value of the objective functional due to the perturbation is measured by the dual. The optimum values of the primal variables are locally approximated as linear functions of the perturbation; the theory of generalized inverse operators is used in the approximation. We give an approximation to the primal variables if the problem is perturbed. The results are specialized for some continuous-time and finite-dimensional cases. Two examples for finite-dimensional problems are given. We apply the theory to the continuous-time linear programming problem and prove some continuity results for the optimal primal and dual objective functionals.The authors are indebted to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for financial support through Grants A4109 and A7329, respectively. They would also like to thank the referee for his comments.     

Discretize-then-relax approach for convex/concave relaxations of the solutions of parametric ODEs

This paper presents a discretize-then-relax methodology to compute convex/concave bounds for the solutions of a wide class of parametric nonlinear ODEs. The procedure builds upon interval methods for ODEs and uses the McCormick relaxation technique to propagate convex/concave bounds. At each integration step, a two-phase procedure is applied: a priori convex/concave bounds that are valid over the entire step are calculated in the first phase; then, pointwise-in-time convex/concave bounds at the end of the step are obtained in the second phase. An approach that refines the interval state bounds by considering subgradients and affine relaxations at a number of reference parameter values is also presented. The discretize-then-relax method is implemented in an object-oriented manner and is demonstrated using several numerical examples.     

Lagrange Multiplier Conditions Characterizing the Optimal Solution Sets of Cone-Constrained Convex Programs

Various characterizations of optimal solution sets of cone-constrained convex optimization problems are given. The results are expressed in terms of subgradients and Lagrange multipliers. We establish first that the Lagrangian function of a convex program is constant on the optimal solution set. This elementary property is then used to derive various simple Lagrange multiplier-based characterizations of the solution set. For a finite-dimensional convex program with inequality constraints, the characterizations illustrate that the active constraints with positive Lagrange multipliers at an optimal solution remain active at all optimal solutions of the program. The results are applied to derive corresponding Lagrange multiplier characterizations of the solution sets of semidefinite programs and fractional programs. Specific examples are given to illustrate the nature of the results.     

Decomposition Techniques for Bilinear Saddle Point Problems and Variational Inequalities with Affine Monotone Operators

The majority of first-order methods for large-scale convex–concave saddle point problems and variational inequalities with monotone operators are proximal algorithms. To make such an algorithm practical, the problem’s domain should be proximal-friendly—admit a strongly convex function with easy to minimize linear perturbations. As a by-product, this domain admits a computationally cheap linear minimization oracle (LMO) capable to minimize linear forms. There are, however, important situations where a cheap LMO indeed is available, but the problem domain is not proximal-friendly, which motivates search for algorithms based solely on LMO. For smooth convex minimization, there exists a classical algorithm using LMO—conditional gradient. In contrast, known to us similar techniques for other problems with convex structure (nonsmooth convex minimization, convex–concave saddle point problems, even as simple as bilinear ones, and variational inequalities with monotone operators, even as simple as affine) are quite recent and utilize common approach based on Fenchel-type representations of the associated objectives/vector fields. The goal of this paper was to develop alternative (and seemingly much simpler) decomposition techniques based on LMO for bilinear saddle point problems and for variational inequalities with affine monotone operators.     

The infima of functionals of a special kind on a compact convex set

It is proved that the infimum of the ratio of a concave functional and a convex functional is attained at the extreme points of a compact convex set in a normed linear space. A criterion for the membership of a given element in the set of extreme points is proposed and the existence of a strongly convex functional on a compact set is shown.     

Some Farkas-type results for fractional programming problems with DC functions

For a kind of fractional programming problem that the objective functions are the ratio of two DC (difference of convex) functions with finitely many convex constraints, in this paper, its dual problems are constructed, weak and strong duality assertions are given, and some sufficient and necessary optimality conditions which characterize their optimal solutions are obtained. Some recently obtained Farkas-type results for fractional programming problems that the objective functions are the ratio of a convex function to a concave function with finitely many convex constraints are the special cases of the general results of this paper.     

Analysis of Bounds for Multilinear Functions

We analyze four bounding schemes for multilinear functions and theoretically compare their tightness. We prove that one of the four schemes provides the convex envelope and that two schemes provide the concave envelope for the product of p variables over .     

Optimal Financial Portfolios

The classes of reward‐risk optimization problems that arise from different choices of reward and risk measures are considered. In certain examples the generic problem reduces to linear or quadratic programming problems. An algorithm based on a sequence of convex feasibility problems is given for the general quasi‐concave ratio problem. Reward‐risk ratios that are appropriate in particular for non‐normal assets return distributions and are not quasi‐concave are also considered.     

A production-transportation problem with stochastic demand and concave production costs

Well known extensions of the classical transportation problem are obtained by including fixed costs for the production of goods at the supply points (facility location) and/or by introducing stochastic demand, modeled by convex nonlinear costs, at the demand points (the stochastic transportation problem, [STP]). However, the simultaneous use of concave and convex costs is not very well treated in the literature. Economies of scale often yield concave cost functions other than fixed charges, so in this paper we consider a problem with general concave costs at the supply points, as well as convex costs at the demand points. The objective function can then be represented as the difference of two convex functions, and is therefore called a d.c. function. We propose a solution method which reduces the problem to a d.c. optimization problem in a much smaller space, then solves the latter by a branch and bound procedure in which bounding is based on solving subproblems of the form of [STP]. We prove convergence of the method and report computational tests that indicate that quite large problems can be solved efficiently. Problems up to the size of 100 supply points and 500 demand points are solved. Received October 11, 1993 / Revised version received July 31, 1995 Published online November 24, 1998