A Nonconvex Proximal Bundle Method for Nonsmooth Constrained Optimization

On an exact penalty function method for nonlinear mixed discrete programming problems and its applications in search engine advertising problems

In this paper, the classical exact absolute value penalty function method is used for solving a new class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems. Nonconvex nondifferentiable optimization problems with both inequality and equality constraints are considered here, in which not all functions constituting them have the fundamental property of convex functions and most classes of generalized convex functions—namely, a stationary point of such a function is its global minimum. It is proved for such nonconvex optimization problems that there exists a finite threshold of penalty parameters equal to the largest absolute value of a Lagrange multiplier such that, for every penalty parameter exceeding this lower bound, there is the equivalence between an optimal solution in the original constrained minimization problem with ‐invex functions and a minimizer in its associated penalized optimization problem with the exact l1 penalty function. Further, under nondifferentiable ‐invexity assumptions, a characterization of a saddle point of the Lagrange function, defined for the considered constrained optimization problem in terms of minimizers of its associated exact penalized optimization problem with the exact l1 penalty function, is presented.

In this paper, we study a new exact and smooth penalty function forsemi-infinite programming problems with continuous inequalityconstraints. Through this exact penalty function, we can transform asemi-infinite programming problem into an unconstrained optimizationproblem. We find that, under some reasonable conditions when thepenalty parameter is sufficiently large, the local minimizer of thispenalty function is the local minimizer of the primal problem.Moreover, under some mild assumptions, the local exactness propertyis explored. The numerical results demonstrate that it is aneffective and promising approach for solving constrainedsemi-infinite programming problems.

We propose a Gauss–Newton-type method for nonlinear constrained optimization using the exact penalty introduced recently by Andre and Silva for variational inequalities. We extend their penalty function to both equality and inequality constraints using a weak regularity assumption, and as a result, we obtain a continuously differentiable exact penalty function and a new reformulation of the KKT conditions as a system of equations. Such reformulation allows the use of a semismooth Newton method, so that local superlinear convergence rate can be proved under an assumption weaker than the usual strong second-order sufficient condition and without requiring strict complementarity. Besides, we note that the exact penalty function can be used to globalize the method. We conclude with some numerical experiments using the collection of test problems CUTE.

In this paper, we will study optimality conditions of semi-infinite programs and generalized semi-infinite programs by employing lower order exact penalty functions and the condition that the generalized second-order directional derivative of the constraint function at the candidate point along any feasible direction for the linearized constraint set is non-positive. We consider three types of penalty functions for semi-infinite program and investigate the relationship among the exactness of these penalty functions. We employ lower order integral exact penalty functions and the second-order generalized derivative of the constraint function to establish optimality conditions for semi-infinite programs. We adopt the exact penalty function technique in terms of a classical augmented Lagrangian function for the lower-level problems of generalized semi-infinite programs to transform them into standard semi-infinite programs and then apply our results for semi-infinite programs to derive the optimality condition for generalized semi-infinite programs. We will give various examples to illustrate our results and assumptions.

In this paper we consider inequality constrained nonlinear optimization problems where the first order derivatives of the objective function and the constraints cannot be used. Our starting point is the possibility to transform the original constrained problem into an unconstrained or linearly constrained minimization of a nonsmooth exact penalty function. This approach shows two main difficulties: the first one is the nonsmoothness of this class of exact penalty functions which may cause derivative-free codes to converge to nonstationary points of the problem; the second one is the fact that the equivalence between stationary points of the constrained problem and those of the exact penalty function can only be stated when the penalty parameter is smaller than a threshold value which is not known a priori. In this paper we propose a derivative-free algorithm which overcomes the preceding difficulties and produces a sequence of points that admits a subsequence converging to a Karush–Kuhn–Tucker point of the constrained problem. In particular the proposed algorithm is based on a smoothing of the nondifferentiable exact penalty function and includes an updating rule which, after at most a finite number of updates, is able to determine a “right value” for the penalty parameter. Furthermore we present the results obtained on a real world problem concerning the estimation of parameters in an insulin-glucose model of the human body.

In this paper we extend the theory of exact penalty functions for nonlinear programs whose objective functions and equality and inequality constraints are locally Lipschitz; arbitrary simple constraints are also allowed. Assuming a weak stability condition, we show that for all sufficiently large penalty parameter values an isolated local minimum of the nonlinear program is also an isolated local minimum of the exact penalty function. A tight lower bound on the parameter value is provided when certain first order sufficiency conditions are satisfied. We apply these results to unify and extend some results for convex programming. Since several effective algorithms for solving nonlinear programs with differentiable functions rely on exact penalty functions, our results provide a framework for extending these algorithms to problems with locally Lipschitz functions.

We revisit and adapt the extended sequential quadratic method (ESQM) in Auslender (J Optim Theory Appl 156:183–212, 2013) for solving a class of difference-of-convex optimization problems whose constraints are defined as the intersection of level sets of Lipschitz differentiable functions and a simple compact convex set. Particularly, for this class of problems, we develop a variant of ESQM, called ESQM with extrapolation (ESQMe), which incorporates Nesterov’s extrapolation techniques for empirical acceleration. Under standard constraint qualifications, we show that the sequence generated by ESQMe clusters at a critical point if the extrapolation parameters are uniformly bounded above by a certain threshold. Convergence of the whole sequence and the convergence rate are established by assuming Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz (KL) property of a suitable potential function and imposing additional differentiability assumptions on the objective and constraint functions. In addition, when the objective and constraint functions are all convex, we show that linear convergence can be established if a certain exact penalty function is known to be a KL function with exponent 12; we also discuss how the KL exponent of such an exact penalty function can be deduced from that of the original extended objective (i.e., sum of the objective and the indicator function of the constraint set). Finally, we perform numerical experiments to demonstrate the empirical acceleration of ESQMe over a basic version of ESQM, and illustrate its effectiveness by comparing with the natural competing algorithm SCPls from Yu et al. (SIAM J Optim 31:2024–2054, 2021).

An interval algorithm for nondifferentiable global optimization

In this paper, a convex filled function method for solving constrained global optimization problems is proposed. A convex filled function is proposed by combining the idea of filled function in unconstrained global optimization and the idea of penalty function in constrained optimization. Then a convex filled function method for obtaining a global minimizer or an approximate global minimizer of the constrained global optimization problem is presented. Some numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of this global optimization method for solving constrained global optimization problems.

In this paper, a modified simple penalty function is proposed for a constrained nonlinear programming problem by augmenting the dimension of the program with a variable that controls the weight of the penalty terms. This penalty function enjoys improved smoothness. Under mild conditions, it can be proved to be exact in the sense that local minimizers of the original constrained problem are precisely the local minimizers of the associated penalty problem. MSC:47H20, 35K55, 90C30.

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In this work, an exact objective penalty function and an exact objective filled penalty function are proposed to solve constrained optimization problems. There are two main innovations of these two functions: using the exact objective penalty function to find a locally optimal point; a better locally optimal point than the current one can be found by exact objective filled penalty function. A local search method and a global search method for constrained optimization problems are proposed. We can use this new global search method to compute an approximately globally optimal point for constrained optimization problems. The convergence of the sequences obtained by the new algorithms are also analyzed respectively. Finally, the rationality of these two search methods are illustrated by numerical experiments.</p>

In this study, we deal with the nonlinear constrained global optimization problems. First, we introduce a new smooth exact penalty function for constrained optimization problems. We combine the exact penalty function with the auxiliary function in regard to constrained global optimization. We present a new auxiliary function approach and the adapted algorithm for solving non-linear inequality constrained global optimization problems. Finally, we illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm on some numerical examples.

ABSTRACTIn this article, the vector exact l1 penalty function method used for solving nonconvex nondifferentiable multiobjective programming problems is analyzed. In this method, the vector penalized optimization problem with the vector exact l1 penalty function is defined. Conditions are given guaranteeing the equivalence of the sets of (weak) Pareto optimal solutions of the considered nondifferentiable multiobjective programming problem and of the associated vector penalized optimization problem with the vector exact l1 penalty function. This equivalence is established for nondifferentiable invex vector optimization problems. Some examples of vector optimization problems are presented to illustrate the results established in the article.

In this paper, we consider a general class of nonlinear mixed discrete programming problems. By introducing continuous variables to replace the discrete variables, the problem is first transformed into an equivalent nonlinear continuous optimization problem subject to original constraints and additional linear and quadratic constraints. Then, an exact penalty function is employed to construct a sequence of unconstrained optimization problems, each of which can be solved effectively by unconstrained optimization techniques, such as conjugate gradient or quasi-Newton methods. It is shown that any local optimal solution of the unconstrained optimization problem is a local optimal solution of the transformed nonlinear constrained continuous optimization problem when the penalty parameter is sufficiently large. Numerical experiments are carried out to test the efficiency of the proposed method.