Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Problems with switching costs: A shortest path approach

We investigate an extension of Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Problems (MIOCPs) by adding switching costs, which enables the penalization of chattering and extends current modeling capabilities. The decomposition approach, consisting of solving a partial outer convexification to obtain a relaxed solution and using rounding schemes to obtain a discrete-valued control can still be applied, but the … Read more

A primal-dual modified log-barrier method for inequality constrained nonlinear optimization

We present a primal-dual modified log-barrier algorithm to solve inequality constrained nonlinear optimization problems. Basically, the algorithm is a Newton-like method applied to a perturbation of the optimality system that follows from a reformulation of the initial problem by introducing a modified log-barrier function to handle inequality constraints. The algorithm uses an outer/inner iteration scheme … Read more

A Polynomial-time Algorithm with Tight Error Bounds for Single-period Unit Commitment Problem

This paper proposes a Lagrangian dual based polynomial-time approximation algorithm for solving the single-period unit commitment problem, which can be formulated as a mixed integer quadratic programming problem and proven to be NP-hard. Tight theoretical bounds for the absolute errors and relative errors of the approximate solutions generated by the proposed algorithm are provided. Computational … Read more

Random projections map a set of points in a high dimensional space to a lower dimen- sional one while approximately preserving all pairwise Euclidean distances. While random projections are usually applied to numerical data, we show they can be successfully applied to quadratic programming formulations over a set of linear inequality constraints. Instead of solving … Read more

Complexity and performance of an Augmented Lagrangian algorithm

Algencan is a well established safeguarded Augmented Lagrangian algorithm introduced in [R. Andreani, E. G. Birgin, J. M. Martínez and M. L. Schuverdt, On Augmented Lagrangian methods with general lower-level constraints, SIAM Journal on Optimization 18, pp. 1286-1309, 2008]. Complexity results that report its worst-case behavior in terms of iterations and evaluations of functions and … Read more

On the Complexity of an Augmented Lagrangian Method for Nonconvex Optimization

In this paper we study the worst-case complexity of an inexact Augmented Lagrangian method for nonconvex constrained problems. Assuming that the penalty parameters are bounded, we prove a complexity bound of $\mathcal{O}(|\log(\epsilon)|)$ outer iterations for the referred algorithm to generate an $\epsilon$-approximate KKT point, for $\epsilon\in (0,1)$. When the penalty parameters are unbounded, we prove … Read more

A Shifted Primal-Dual Interior Method for Nonlinear Optimization

Interior methods provide an effective approach for the treatment of inequality constraints in nonlinearly constrained optimization. A new primal-dual interior method is proposed based on minimizing a sequence of shifted primal-dual penalty-barrier functions. Certain global convergence properties are established. In particular, it is shown that every limit point is either an infeasible stationary point, or … Read more