Derivative-free optimization and filter methods to solve nonlinear constrained problems

In real optimization problems, usually the analytical expression of the objective function is not known, nor its derivatives, or they are complex. In these cases it becomes essential to use optimization methods where the calculation of the derivatives, or the verification of their existence, is not necessary: the Direct Search Methods or Derivative-free Methods are one solution. When the problem has constraints, penalty functions are often used. Unfortunately the choice of the penalty parameters is, frequently, very difficult, because most strategies for choosing it are heuristics strategies. As an alternative to penalty function appeared the filter methods. A filter algorithm introduces a function that aggregates the constrained violations and constructs a biobjective problem. In this problem the step is accepted if it either reduces the objective function or the constrained violation. This implies that the filter methods are less parameter dependent than a penalty function. In this work, we present a new direct search method, based on simplex methods, for general constrained optimization that combines the features of the simplex method and filter methods. This method does not compute or approximate any derivatives, penalty constants or Lagrange multipliers. The basic idea of simplex filter algorithm is to construct an initial simplex and use the simplex to drive the search. We illustrate the behavior of our algorithm through some examples. The proposed methods were implemented in Java

Fuzzy Bilevel Optimization

In the dissertation the solution approaches for different fuzzy optimization problems are presented. The single-level optimization problem with fuzzy objective is solved by its reformulation into a biobjective optimization problem. A special attention is given to the computation of the membership function of the fuzzy solution of the fuzzy optimization problem in the linear case. Necessary and sufficient optimality conditions of the the convex nonlinear fuzzy optimization problem are derived in differentiable and nondifferentiable cases. A fuzzy optimization problem with both fuzzy objectives and constraints is also investigated in the thesis in the linear case. These solution approaches are applied to fuzzy bilevel optimization problems. In the case of bilevel optimization problem with fuzzy objective functions, two algorithms are presented and compared using an illustrative example. For the case of fuzzy linear bilevel optimization problem with both fuzzy objectives and constraints k-th best algorithm is adopted.:1 Introduction 1 1.1 Why optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Fuzziness as a concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 2 1.3 Bilevel problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 Preliminaries 11 2.1 Fuzzy sets and fuzzy numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2 Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.3 Fuzzy order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.4 Fuzzy functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 3 Optimization problem with fuzzy objective 19 3.1 Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 3.2 Solution method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 3.3 Local optimality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 3.4 Existence of an optimal solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 4 Linear optimization with fuzzy objective 27 4.1 Main approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 4.2 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 4.3 Optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 4.4 Membership function value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 4.4.1 Special case of triangular fuzzy numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.4.2 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 5 Optimality conditions 47 5.1 Differentiable fuzzy optimization problem . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 48 5.1.1 Basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 5.1.2 Necessary optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 49 5.1.3 Suffcient optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 5.2 Nondifferentiable fuzzy optimization problem . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5.2.1 Basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5.2.2 Necessary optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 5.2.3 Suffcient optimality conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 5.2.4 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 6 Fuzzy linear optimization problem over fuzzy polytope 59 6.1 Basic notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 6.2 The fuzzy polytope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 6.3 Formulation and solution method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 65 6.4 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 7 Bilevel optimization with fuzzy objectives 73 7.1 General formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 7.2 Solution approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 7.3 Yager index approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 7.4 Algorithm I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 7.5 Membership function approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78 7.6 Algorithm II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 7.7 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 8 Linear fuzzy bilevel optimization (with fuzzy objectives and constraints) 87 8.1 Formulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 8.2 Solution approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 8.3 Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 8.4 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 9 Conclusions 95 Bibliography 9

On the use of polynomial models in multiobjective directional direct search

FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia PTDC/MAT-APL/28400/2017; UIDB/00297/2020.Polynomial interpolation or regression models are an important tool in Derivative-free Optimization, acting as surrogates of the real function. In this work, we propose the use of these models in the multiobjective framework of directional direct search, namely the one of Direct Multisearch. Previously evaluated points are used to build quadratic polynomial models, which are minimized in an attempt of generating nondominated points of the true function, defining a search step for the algorithm. Numerical results state the competitiveness of the proposed approach.authorsversionpublishe

A trust region algorithm for heterogeneous multiobjective optimization

This paper presents a new trust region method for multiobjective heterogeneous optimization problems. One of the objective functions is an expensive black-box function, for example given by a time-consuming simulation. For this function derivative information cannot be used and the computation of function values involves high computational effort. The other objective functions are given analytically and derivatives can easily be computed. The method uses the basic trust region approach by restricting the computations in every iteration to a local area and replacing the objective functions by suitable models. The search direction is generated in the image space by using local ideal points. It is proved that the presented algorithm converges to a Pareto critical point. Numerical results are presented and compared to another algorithm

Expensive multi-objective optimization of electromagnetic mixing in a liquid metal

This paper presents a novel trust-region method for the optimization of multiple expensive functions. We apply this method to a biobjective optimization problem in fluid mechanics, the optimal mixing of particles in a flow in a closed container. The three-dimensional time-dependent flows are driven by Lorentz forces that are generated by an oscillating permanent magnet located underneath the rectangular vessel. The rectangular magnet provides a spatially non-uniform magnetic field that is known analytically. The magnet oscillation creates a steady mean flow (steady streaming) similar to those observed from oscillating rigid bodies. In the optimization problem, randomly distributed mass-less particles are advected by the flow to achieve a homogeneous distribution (objective function 1) while keeping the work done to move the permanent magnet minimal (objective function 2). A single evaluation of these two objective functions may take more than two hours. For that reason, to save computational time, the proposed method uses interpolation models on trust-regions for finding descent directions. We show that, even for our significantly simplified model problem, the mixing patterns vary significantly with the control parameters, which justifies the use of improved optimization techniques and their further development