This book will present the papers delivered at the first U.S. conference devoted exclusively to global optimization and will thus provide valuable insights into the significant research on the topic that has been emerging during recent years. Held at Princeton University in May 1991, the conference brought together an interdisciplinary group of the most active developers of algorithms for global optimization in order to focus the attention of the mathematical programming community on the unsolved problems and diverse applications of this field. The main subjects addressed at the conference were advances in deterministic and stochastic methods for global optimization, parallel algorithms for global optimization problems, and applications of global optimization. Although global optimization is primarily a mathematical problem, it is relevant to several other disciplines, including computer science, applied mathematics, physical chemistry, molecular biology, statistics, physics, engineering, operations research, communication theory, and economics. Global optimization problems originate from a wide variety of mathematical models of real-world systems. Some of its applications are allocation and location problems and VLSI and data-base design problems. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume contains a thorough overview of the rapidly growing field of global optimization, with chapters on key topics such as complexity, heuristic methods, derivation of lower bounds for minimization problems, and branch-and-bound methods and convergence. The final chapter offers both benchmark test problems and applications of global optimization, such as finding the conformation of a molecule or planning an optimal trajectory for interplanetary space travel. An appendix provides fundamental information on convex and concave functions. Intended for Ph.D. students, researchers, and practitioners looking for advanced solution methods to difficult optimization problems. It can be used as a supplementary text in an advanced graduate-level seminar.

Interest in constrained optimization originated with the simple linear pro gramming model since it was practical and perhaps the only computationally tractable model at the time. Constrained linear optimization models were soon adopted in numerous application areas and are perhaps the most widely used mathematical models in operations research and management science at the time of this writing. Modelers have, however, found the assumption of linearity to be overly restrictive in expressing the real-world phenomena and problems in economics, finance, business, communication, engineering design, computational biology, and other areas that frequently demand the use of nonlinear expressions and discrete variables in optimization models. Both of these extensions of the linear programming model are NP-hard, thus representing very challenging problems. On the brighter side, recent advances in algorithmic and computing technology make it possible to re visit these problems with the hope of solving practically relevant problems in reasonable amounts of computational time. Initial attempts at solving nonlinear programs concentrated on the de velopment of local optimization methods guaranteeing globality under the assumption of convexity. On the other hand, the integer programming liter ature has concentrated on the development of methods that ensure global optima. The aim of this book is to marry the advancements in solving nonlinear and integer programming models and to develop new results in the more general framework of mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLPs) with the goal of devising practically efficient global optimization algorithms for MINLPs.

Global Optimization has emerged as one of the most exciting new areas of mathematical programming. Global optimization has received a wide attraction from many fields in the past few years, due to the success of new algorithms for addressing previously intractable problems from diverse areas such as computational chemistry and biology, biomedicine, structural optimization, computer sciences, operations research, economics, and engineering design and control. The chapters in this volume focus on recent deterministic methods and stochastic methods for global optimization, distributed computing methods in global optimization, and applications of global optimization in several branches of applied science and engineering, computer science, computational chemistry, structural biology, and bio-informatics.

A textbook for an undergraduate course in mathematical programming for students with a knowledge of elementary real analysis, linear algebra, and classical linear programming (simple techniques). Focuses on the computation and characterization of global optima of nonlinear functions, rather than the locally optimal solutions addressed by most books on optimization. Incorporates the theoretical, algorithmic, and computational advances of the past three decades that help solve globally multi-extreme problems in the mathematical modeling of real world systems. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Optimization is of critical importance in engineering. Engineers constantly strive for the best possible solutions, the most economical use of limited resources, and the greatest efficiency. As system complexity increases, these goals mandate the use of state-of-the-art optimization techniques. In recent years, the theory and methodology of optimization have seen revolutionary improvements. Moreover, the exponential growth in computational power, along with the availability of multicore computing with virtually unlimited memory and storage capacity, has fundamentally changed what engineers can do to optimize their designs. This is a two-way process: engineers benefit from developments in optimization methodology, and challenging new classes of optimization problems arise from novel engineering applications. Advances and Trends in Optimization with Engineering Applications reviews 10 major areas of optimization and related engineering applications, providing a broad summary of state-of-the-art optimization techniques most important to engineering practice. Each part provides a clear overview of a specific area and discusses a range of real-world problems. The book provides a solid foundation for engineers and mathematical optimizers alike who want to understand the importance of optimization methods to engineering and the capabilities of these methods.

The articles that comprise this distinguished annual volume for the Advances in Mechanics and Mathematics series have been written in honor of Gilbert Strang, a world renowned mathematician and exceptional person. Written by leading experts in complementarity, duality, global optimization, and quantum computations, this collection reveals the beauty of these mathematical disciplines and investigates recent developments in global optimization, nonconvex and nonsmooth analysis, nonlinear programming, theoretical and engineering mechanics, large scale computation, quantum algorithms and computation, and information theory.