The linear complementarity problem as a separable bilinear program

The nonmonotone linear complementarity problem (LCP) is formulated as a bilinear program with separable constraints and an objective function that minimizes a natural error residual for the LCP. A linear-programming-based algorithm applied to the bilinear program terminates in a finite number of steps at a solution or stationary point of the problem. The bilinear algorithm solved 80 consecutive cases of the LCP formulation of the knapsack feasibility problem ranging in size between 10 and 3000, with almost constant average number of major iterations equal to four.This material is based on research supported by Air Force Office of Scientific Research Grant F49620-94-1-0036 and National Science Foundation Grants CCR-9322479 and CDA-9024618.