We propose an exact penalty approach for solving mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems by converting a general MINLP problem to a finite sequence of nonlinear programming (NLP) problems with only continuous variables. We express conditions of exactness for MINLP problems and show how the exact penalty approach can be extended to constrained problems.

In this paper a new approach for the global solution of nonconvex MINLP (Mixed Integer NonLinear Programming) problems that contain signomial (generalized geometric) expressions is proposed and illustrated. By applying different variable transformation techniques and a discretization scheme a lower bounding convex MINLP problem can be derived. The convexified MINLP problem can be solved with st...

The paper presents the Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) approach to structural optimization. MINLP is a combined discrete/continuous optimization technique, where discrete binary 0-1 variables are defined for optimization of discrete alternatives and continuous variables for optimization of parameters. The MINLP optimization is performed through three steps: i.e. the generation of a...

Mathematical programming has long been recognized as a promising direction to the efficient solution of design, synthesis and operation problems hat can gain industry the competitive advantage required to survive in today’s difficult economic environment. Most of the engineering design roblems can be modelled as MINLP problems with stochastic parameters. In this paper a decomposition algorithm ...

This paper considers the solution of Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) problems. Classical methods for the solution of MINLP problems decompose the problem by separating the nonlinear part from the integer part. This approach is largely due to the existence of packaged software for solving Nonlinear Programming (NLP) and Mixed Integer Linear Programming problems. In contrast, an integ...

This paper presents a structural synthesis using the Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) approach. The MINLP is a combined discrete/continuous optimization technique, where discrete binary 0-1 variables are defined for optimization of discrete alternatives and continuous variables for optimization of parameters. The MINLP optimization to a structural synthesis is performed through thre...

Mathematical programming has long been recognized as a promising direction to the efficient solution of design, synthesis and operation problems that can gain industry the competitive advantage required to survive in today’s difficult economic environment. Most of the engineering design problems can be modeled as MINLP problems with stochastic parameters. In this paper a novel decomposition alg...

The analytical target cascading (ATC) methodology for optimizing hierarchical systems has demonstrated convergence properties for continuous, convex formulations. However, many practical problems involve both continuous and discrete design variables, resulting in mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulations. While current ATC methods have been used to solve such MINLP formulations i...

Recently, the so-called ψ-learning approach, the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier obtained with the ramp loss, has attracted attention from the computational point of view. A Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) formulation has been proposed for ψ-learning, but solving this MINLP formulation to optimality is only possible for datasets of small size. For datasets of more realistic ...