Meshes containing elements with bad quality can result in poorly conditioned systems of equations that must be solved when using a discretization method, such as the finite-element method, for solving a partial differential equation. Moreover, such meshes can lead to poor accuracy in the approximate solution computed. In this paper, we present a nonlinear fractional program that relocates the vertices of a given mesh to optimize the average element shape quality as measured by the inverse mean-ratio metric. To solve the resulting large-scale optimization problems, we apply an efficient implementation of an inexact Newton algorithm using the conjugate gradient method with a block Jacobi preconditioner to compute the direction. We show that the block Jacobi preconditioner is positive definite by proving a general theorem concerning the convexity of fractional functions, applying this result to components of the inverse meanratio metric, and showing that each block in the preconditioner is invertible. Numerical results obtained with this special-purpose code on several test meshes are presented and used to quantify the impact on solution time and memory requirements of using a modeling language and general-purpose algorithm to solve these problems. 1

Abstract. We present an algorithm for large-scale equality constrained optimization. The method is based on a characterization of inexact sequential quadratic programming (SQP) steps that can ensure global convergence. Inexact SQP methods are needed for large-scale applications for which the iteration matrix cannot be explicitly formed or factored and the arising linear systems must be solved using iterative linear algebra techniques. We address how to determine when a given inexact step makes sufficient progress toward a solution of the nonlinear program, as measured by an exact penalty function. The method is globalized by a line search. An analysis of the global convergence properties of the algorithm and numerical results are presented. Key words. large-scale optimization, constrained optimization, sequential quadratic programming, inexact linear system solvers, Krylov subspace methods AMS subject classifications. 49M37, 65K05, 90C06, 90C30, 90C55 1. Introduction. In

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We propose a globalization strategy for nonlinear constrained optimization. The method employs a “flexible” penalty function to promote convergence, where during each iteration the penalty parameter can be chosen as any number within a prescribed interval, rather than a fixed value. This increased flexibility in the step acceptance procedure is designed to promote long productive steps for fast convergence. An analysis of the global convergence properties of the approach in the context of a line search Sequential Quadratic Programming method and numerical results for the KNITRO software package are presented.

Abstract. In this paper, we examine sets of symbolic tools associated to modeling systems for mathematical programming which can be used to automatically detect the presence or lack of convexity and concavity in the objective and constraint functions. As a consequence, convexity of the feasible set may be assessed to some extent. The coconut solver system [Sch04b] focuses on nonlinear global continuous optimization and possesses its own modeling language and data structures. The Dr.ampl [FO07] meta-solver aims to analyze nonlinear diffentiable optimization models and hooks into the ampl Solver Library [Gay02]. The symbolic analysis may ◭ be supplemented with a numerical disproving phase when the former returns inconclusive results. We report numerical results using these tools on sets of test problems for both global and local optimization. 1.

Testing is a crucial part of software development in general, and hence also in mathematical programming. Unfortunately, it is often a time consuming and little exciting activity. This naturally motivated us to increase the e ciency in testing solvers for optimization problems and to automatize as much of the procedure as possible. Keywords: test environment, optimization, solver benchmarking, solver comparison The testing procedure typically consists of three basic tasks: a) organize test problem sets, also called test libraries; b) solve selected test problems with selected solvers; c) analyze, check and compare the results. The Test Environment is a graphical user interface (GUI) that enables to manage the tasks a) and b) interactively, and task c) automatically. The Test Environment is particularly designed for users who seek to 1. adjust solver parameters, or 2. compare solvers on single problems, or 3. evaluate solvers on suitable test sets.

This paper studies algorithms for the solution of mixed symmetric linear complementarity problems. The goal is to compute fast and approximate solutions of medium to large sized problems, such as those arising in computer game simulations and American options pricing. The paper proposes an improvement of a method described by Kocvara and Zowe [19] that combines projected Gauss-Seidel iterations with subspace minimization steps. The proposed algorithm employs a recursive subspace minimization designed to handle severely ill-conditioned problems. Numerical tests indicate that the approach is more efficient than interior-point and gradient projection methods on some physical simulation problems that arise in computer game scenarios.

We present a novel parallel framework for solving large-scale continuous nonlinear optimization problems based on constraint partitioning. The framework distributes constraints and variables to parallel processors and uses an existing solver to handle the partitioned subproblems. In contrast to most previous decomposition methods that require either separability or convexity of constraints, our approach is based on a new constraint partitioning theory and can handle nonconvex problems with inseparable global constraints. We also propose a hypergraph partitioning method to recognize the problem structure. Experimental results show that the proposed parallel algorithm can efficiently solve some difficult test cases. 1

Abstract. The Test Environment is an interface to efficiently test different optimization solvers. It is designed as a tool for both developers of solver software and practitioners who just look for the best solver for their specific problem class. It enables users to: • Choose and compare diverse solver routines; • Organize and solve large test problem sets; • Select interactively subsets of test problem sets; • Perform a statistical analysis of the results, automatically produced as L ATEX and PDF output. The Test Environment is free to use for research purposes.

Convexity is an important property in nonlinear optimization since it allows to apply efficient local methods for finding global solutions. We propose to apply symbolic methods to prove or disprove convexity of rational functions over a polyhedral domain. Our algorithms reduce convexity questions to real quantifier elimination problems. Our methods are implemented and publicly available in the open source computer algebra system Reduce. Our long term goal is to integrate Reduce as a “workhorse ” for symbolic computations into a numerical solver. 1