A multi-period production and distribution optimization model for radiopharmaceuticals

This paper addresses the manufacturing and distribution of short-lived radio-pharmaceuticals which are mainly used in diagnostic imaging studies. We develop a mixed integer nonlinear optimization model that is flexible enough to capture the complex underlying nuclear physics of the production process of fludeoxyglucose (FDG), which is widely used in oncology and cardiology, as well as … Read more

Bi-Perspective Functions for Mixed-Integer Fractional Programs with Indicator Variables

Perspective functions have long been used to convert fractional programs into convex programs. More recently, they have been used to form tight relaxations of mixed-integer nonlinear programs with so-called indicator variables. Motivated by a practical application (maximising energy efficiency in an OFDMA system), we consider problems that have a fractional objective and indicator variables simultaneously. … Read more

A Decomposition Method for MINLPs with Lipschitz Continuous Nonlinearities

Many mixed-integer optimization problems are constrained by nonlinear functions that do not possess desirable analytical properties like convexity or factorability or cannot even be evaluated exactly. This is, e.g., the case for problems constrained by differential equations or for models that rely on black-box simulation runs. For these problem classes, we present, analyze, and test … Read more

Solving Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs using Adaptively Refined Mixed-Integer Linear Programs

We propose a method for solving mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLPs) to global optimality by discretization of occuring nonlinearities. The main idea is based on using piecewise linear functions to construct mixed-integer linear program (MIP) relaxations of the underlying MINLP. In order to find a global optimum of the given MINLP we develope an iterative algorithm … Read more

Airport Capacity Extension, Fleet Investment, and Optimal Aircraft Scheduling in a Multi-Level Market Model: On the Effects of Market Regulations

In this paper we present a four-level market model that accounts for airport capacity extension, fleet investment, aircraft scheduling, and ticket trade in a liberalized aviation market with independent decision makers. In particular, budget-constrained airports decide on the first level on their optimal runway capacity extension and on a corresponding airport charge. Airports anticipate optimal … Read more

Complex Number Formulation and Convex Relaxations for Aircraft Conflict Resolution

We present a novel complex number formulation along with tight convex relaxations for the aircraft conflict resolution problem. Our approach combines both speed and heading control and provides global optimality guarantees despite non-convexities in the feasible region. As a side result, we present a new characterization of the conflict separation condition in the form of … Read more

Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming Formulation of a UAV Path Optimization Problem

We present a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulation of a UAV path optimization problem in an attempt to find the globally optimum solution. As objective functions in UAV path optimization problems typically tend to be non-convex, traditional optimization solvers (typically local solvers) are prone to local optima, which lead to severely sub-optimal controls. For the … Read more

Optimal Price Zones of Electricity Markets: A Mixed-Integer Multilevel Model and Global Solution Approaches

Mathematical modeling of market design issues in liberalized electricity markets often leads to mixed-integer nonlinear multilevel optimization problems for which no general-purpose solvers exist and which are intractable in general. In this work, we consider the problem of splitting a market area into a given number of price zones such that the resulting market design … Read more

Computing Feasible Points for Binary MINLPs with MPECs

Nonconvex mixed-binary nonlinear optimization problems frequently appear in practice and are typically extremely hard to solve. In this paper we discuss a class of primal heuristics that are based on a reformulation of the problem as a mathematical program with equilibrium constraints. We then use different regularization schemes for this class of problems and use … Read more

The Multilinear polytope for acyclic hypergraphs

We consider the Multilinear polytope defined as the convex hull of the set of binary points satisfying a collection of multilinear equations. Such sets are of fundamental importance in many types of mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems, such as binary polynomial optimization. Utilizing an equivalent hypergraph representation, we study the facial structure of the Multilinear polytope … Read more