Abstract

. GLOPT is a Fortran77 program for global minimization of a blockseparable objective function subject to bound constraints and block-separable constraints. It finds a nearly globally optimal point that is near a true local minimizer. Unless there are several local minimizers that are nearly global, we thus find a good approximation to the global minimizer. GLOPT uses a branch and bound technique to split the problem recursively into subproblems that are either eliminated or reduced in their size. This is done by an extensive use of the block separable structure of the optimization problem. In this paper we discuss a new reduction technique for boxes and new ways for generating feasible points of constrained nonlinear programs. These are implemented as the first stage of our GLOPT project. The current implementation of GLOPT uses neither derivatives nor simultaneous information about several constraints. Numerical results are already encouraging. Work on an extension using curvature inf...

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