Improved Bounds for Large Scale Capacitated Arc Routing Problem

The Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP) stands among the hardest combinatorial problems to solve or to find high quality solutions. This becomes even more true when dealing with large instances. This paper investigates methods to improve on lower and upper bounds of instances on graphs with over two hundred vertices and three hundred edges, dimensions … Read more

Mixed n-Step MIR Inequalities: Facets for the n-Mixing Set

Gunluk and Pochet [O. Gunluk, Y. Pochet: Mixing mixed integer inequalities. Mathematical Programming 90(2001) 429-457] proposed a procedure to mix mixed integer rounding (MIR) inequalities. The mixed MIR inequalities define the convex hull of the mixing set $\{(y^1,\ldots,y^m,v) \in Z^m \times R_+:\alpha_1 y^i + v \geq \b_i,i=1,\ldots,m\}$ and can also be used to generate valid … Read more

Robust Network Design: Formulations, Valid Inequalities, and Computations

Traffic in communication networks fluctuates heavily over time. Thus, to avoid capacity bottlenecks, operators highly overestimate the traffic volume during network planning. In this paper we consider telecommunication network design under traffic uncertainty, adapting the robust optimization approach of Bertsimas and Sim (2004). We present three different mathematical formulations for this problem, provide valid inequalities, … Read more

Lattice-free sets, multi-branch split disjunctions, and mixed-integer programming

In this paper we study the relationship between valid inequalities for mixed-integer sets, lattice-free sets associated with these inequalities and the multi-branch split cuts introduced by Li and Richard (2008). By analyzing $n$-dimensional lattice-free sets, we prove that for every integer $n$ there exists a positive integer $t$ such that every facet-defining inequality of the … Read more

A (k+1)-Slope Theorem for the k-Dimensional Infinite Group Relaxation

We prove that any minimal valid function for the k-dimensional infinite group relaxation that is piecewise linear with at most k+1 slopes and does not factor through a linear map with non-trivial kernel is extreme. This generalizes a theorem of Gomory and Johnson for k=1, and Cornu\’ejols and Molinaro for k=2. ArticleDownload View PDF

Lower bounds for Chvátal-Gomory style operators

Valid inequalities or cutting planes for (mixed-) integer programming problems are an essential theoretical tool for studying combinatorial properties of polyhedra. They are also of utmost importance for solving optimization problems in practice; in fact any modern solver relies on several families of cutting planes. The Chvátal-Gomory procedure, one such approach, has a peculiarity that … Read more

Complexity results for the gap inequalities for the max-cut problem

In 1996, Laurent and Poljak introduced an extremely general class of cutting planes for the max-cut problem, called gap inequalities. We prove several results about them, including the following: (i) there must exist non-dominated gap inequalities with gap larger than 1, unless NP = co-NP; (ii) there must exist non-dominated gap inequalities with exponentially large … Read more

Coordinated cutting plane generation via multi-objective separation

In cutting plane methods, the question of how to generate the “best possible” set of cuts is both central and crucial. We propose a lexicographic multi-objective cutting plane generation scheme that generates, among all the maximally violated valid inequalities of a given family, an inequality that is undominated and maximally diverse w.r.t. the cuts that … Read more

Computational Experiments with Cross and Crooked Cross Cuts

In a recent paper, Dash, Dey and Gunluk (2010) showed that many families of inequalities for the two-row continuous group relaxation and variants of this relaxation are cross cuts or crooked cross cuts, both of which generalize split cuts. Li and Richard (2008) recently studied t-branch split cuts for mixed-integer programs for integers t >= … Read more

Design and Verify: A New Scheme for Generating Cutting-Planes

A cutting-plane procedure for integer programming (IP) problems usually involves invoking a black-box procedure (such as the Gomory-Chvatal (GC) procedure) to compute a cutting-plane. In this paper, we describe an alternative paradigm of using the same cutting-plane black-box. This involves two steps. In the first step, we design an inequality cx = d + 1\} … Read more