On the Smoothing of the Square-Root Exact Penalty Function for Inequality Constrained Optimization

This paper introduces a second-order differentiability smoothing technique to the classical l 1 exact penalty function for constrained optimization problems(COP). Error estimations among the optimal objective values of the nonsmooth penalty problem, the smoothed penalty problem and the original optimization problem are obtained. Based on the smoothed problem, an algorithm for solving COP is proposed and some preliminary numerical results indicate that the algorithm is quite promising.

In this study, we introduce a new smoothing approximation to the non-differentiable exact penalty functions for inequality constrained optimization problems. Error estimations are investigated between non-smooth penalty function and smoothed penalty function. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed smoothing approach the numerical examples are given.

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

In the paper, we give a smoothing approximation to the nondifferentiable exact penalty function for nonlinear constrained optimization problems. Error estimations are obtained among the optimal objective function values of the smoothed penalty problems, of the nonsmooth penalty problem and of the original problem. An algorithm based on our smoothing function is given, which is showed to be globally convergent under some mild conditions.

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.

We present a stochastic approximation algorithm based on penalty function method and a simultaneous perturbation gradient estimate for solving stochastic optimisation problems with general inequality constraints. We present a general convergence result that applies to a class of penalty functions including the quadratic penalty function, the augmented Lagrangian, and the absolute penalty function. We also establish an asymptotic normality result for the algorithm with smooth penalty functions under minor assumptions. Numerical results are given to compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with different penalty functions.

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.

For smooth optimization problem with equality constraints, new continuously differentiable penalty function is derived. It is proved exact in the sense that local optimizers of a nonlinear program are precisely the optimizers of the associated penalty function under some nondegeneracy assumption. It is simple in the sense that the penalty function only includes the objective function and constrained functions, and it doesn’t include their gradients. This is achieved by augmenting the dimension of the program by a variable that controls the weight of the penalty terms.

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 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.

<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 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.

In this article, a smooth mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPCC) is reformulated as a non-smooth constrained optimization problem by using the Fischer-Burmeister function. A lower-order penalty method is applied to transform the resulted constrained optimization problem into unconstrained optimization problems. Lower-order penalty functions may not be locally Lipschitz. However, they require weaker conditions to guarantee an exact penalization property than the classical l 1 penalty functions. We derive optimality conditions for the penalty problems using a smooth approximate variational principle, and establish that the limit point of a sequence of points that satisfy the second-order necessary optimality conditions of penalty problems is a strongly stationary point (hence a B-stationary point) of the original MPCC if the limit point is feasible to MPCC, and a linear independence constraint qualification for MPCC and an upper level strict complementarity condition hold at the limit point. Furthermore, the limit point also satisfies a second-order necessary condition of MPCC. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate and compare the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

A derivative free method for generally constrained global optimization is described. A non-smooth merit function with one parameter is used. When this parameter equals the optimal objective function value $$f^*$$ f ∗ , the merit function becomes an exact penalty function. The method estimates $$f^*$$ f ∗ , avoiding the need for it to be supplied. The method randomly samples the region satisfying the simple bounds from time to time, ensuring convergence almost surely. Other samples are drawn randomly from smaller regions considered promising. Numerical testing is done using a variety of bound constrained problems and generally constrained problems from the G-suite and elsewhere. Results show the method is competitive in practice. They also show that the method performs better when it estimates the optimal objective function value than when the actual value is used.

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.