Sequential Quadratic Programming Methods with Distributed and Non-Monotone Line Search

Sequential quadratic programming (SQP) methods are widely used for solving practical optimization problems, especially in structural mechanics. The general structure of SQP methods is briefly introduced and it is shown how these methods can be adapted to distributed computing. However, SQP methods are sensitive subject to errors in function and gradient evaluations. Typically they break down with an error message reporting that the line search cannot be terminated successfully. In these cases, a new non-monotone line search is activated. In case of noisy function values, a drastic improvement of the performance is achieved compared to the version with monotone line search. Numerical results are presented for a set of more than 300 standard test examples.