Although the monograph Progress in Optimization I: Contributions from Aus tralasia grew from the idea of publishing a proceedings of the Fourth Optimiza tion Day, held in July 1997 at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the focus soon changed to a refereed volume in optimization. The intention is to publish a similar book annually, following each Optimization Day. The idea of having an annual Optimization Day was conceived by Barney Glover; the first of these Optimization Days was held in 1994 at the University of Ballarat. Barney hoped that such a yearly event would bring together the many, but widely dispersed, researchers in Australia who were publishing in optimization and related areas such as control. The first Optimization Day event was followed by similar conferences at The University of New South Wales (1995), The University of Melbourne (1996), the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1997), and The University of Western Australia (1998). The 1999 conference will return to Ballarat University, being organized by Barney's long-time collaborator Alex Rubinov. In recent years the Optimization Day has been held in conjunction with other locally-held national or international conferences. This has widened the scope of the monograph with contributions not only coming from researchers in Australia and neighboring regions but also from their collaborators in Europe and North America.

This is the second in a series of contributed, refereed volumes devoted to research in optimization by Australian researchers and their collaborators. These volumes are intended to have wide scope and include survey papers by established researchers providing up-to-date information on research directions. This volume includes survey and research papers on theories and methods of nonlinear programming, nonconvex and discrete optimization, stochastic linear programming, generalized convexity, complementarity and vector variational inequality problems, dynamic systems and optimal control and applications to traffic assignment models, train control, manufacturing systems and substrate diffusion of cutaneous tissue. Audience: Practitioners, postgraduate students and researchers in optimization.

'Optimization Day' (OD) has been a series of annual mini-conferences in Aus tralia since 1994. The purpose of this series of events is to gather researchers in optimization and its related areas from Australia and their collaborators, in order to exchange new developments of optimization theories, methods and their applications. The first four OD mini-conferences were held in The Uni versity of Ballarat (1994), The University of New South Wales (1995), The University of Melbourne (1996) and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1997), respectively. They were all on the eastern coast of Australia. The fifth mini-conference Optimization Days was held at the Centre for Ap plied Dynamics and Optimization (CADO), Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Western Australia, Perth, from 29 to 30 June 1998. This is the first time the OD mini-conference has been held at the west ern coast of Australia. This fifth OD preceded the International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA) held at Curtin Uni versity of Technology. Many participants attended both events. There were 28 participants in this year's mini-conference and 22 presentations in the mini conference. The presentations in this volume are refereed contributions based on papers presented at the fifth Optimization Days mini-conference. The volume is di vided into the following parts: Global Optimization, Nonsmooth Optimization, Optimization Methods and Applications.

This book’s aim is to provide several different kinds of information: a delineation of general metaheuristics methods, a number of state-of-the-art articles from a variety of well-known classical application areas as well as an outlook to modern computational methods in promising new areas. Therefore, this book may equally serve as a textbook in graduate courses for students, as a reference book for people interested in engineering or social sciences, and as a collection of new and promising avenues for researchers working in this field.

Shape optimization problems are treated from the classical and modern perspectives Targets a broad audience of graduate students in pure and applied mathematics, as well as engineers requiring a solid mathematical basis for the solution of practical problems Requires only a standard knowledge in the calculus of variations, differential equations, and functional analysis Driven by several good examples and illustrations Poses some open questions.

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.

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.