Combinatorial Integral Approximation Decompositions for Mixed-Integer Optimal Control

Solving mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLPs) is hard in theory and practice. Decomposing the nonlinear and the integer part seems promising from a computational point of view. In general, however, no bounds on the objective value gap can be guaranteed and iterative procedures with potentially many subproblems are necessary. The situation is different for mixed-integer optimal … Read more

Models and Solution Techniques for Production Planning Problems with Increasing Byproducts

We consider a production planning problem where the production process creates a mixture of desirable products and undesirable byproducts. In this production process, at any point in time the fraction of the mixture that is an undesirable byproduct increases monotonically as a function of the cumulative mixture production up to that time. The mathematical formulation … Read more

Unbounded Convex Sets for Non-Convex Mixed-Integer Quadratic Programming

This paper introduces a fundamental family of unbounded convex sets that arises in the context of non-convex mixed-integer quadratic programming. It is shown that any mixed-integer quadratic program with linear constraints can be reduced to the minimisation of a linear function over a set in the family. Some fundamental properties of the convex sets are … Read more

Optimal Design of Electrical Machines: Mathematical Programming Formulations

The optimal design of electrical machines can be mathematically modeled as a mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problem. We present six variants of such a problem, and we show, through extensive computational experiments, that, even though they are mathematically equivalent, the differences in the formulations may have an impact on the numerical performances of a local optimization … Read more

Stochastic binary problems with simple penalties for capacity constraints violations

This paper studies stochastic programs with first-stage binary variables and capacity constraints, using simple penalties for capacities violations. In particular, we take a closer look at the knapsack problem with weights and capacity following independent random variables and prove that the problem is weakly \NP-hard in general. We provide pseudo-polynomial algorithms for three special cases … Read more