11,822 research outputs found
A discontinuous Galerkin method for the Vlasov-Poisson system
A discontinuous Galerkin method for approximating the Vlasov-Poisson system
of equations describing the time evolution of a collisionless plasma is
proposed. The method is mass conservative and, in the case that piecewise
constant functions are used as a basis, the method preserves the positivity of
the electron distribution function and weakly enforces continuity of the
electric field through mesh interfaces and boundary conditions. The performance
of the method is investigated by computing several examples and error estimates
associated system's approximation are stated. In particular, computed results
are benchmarked against established theoretical results for linear advection
and the phenomenon of linear Landau damping for both the Maxwell and Lorentz
distributions. Moreover, two nonlinear problems are considered: nonlinear
Landau damping and a version of the two-stream instability are computed. For
the latter, fine scale details of the resulting long-time BGK-like state are
presented. Conservation laws are examined and various comparisons to theory are
made. The results obtained demonstrate that the discontinuous Galerkin method
is a viable option for integrating the Vlasov-Poisson system.Comment: To appear in Journal for Computational Physics, 2011. 63 pages, 86
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Sequential Convex Programming Methods for Solving Nonlinear Optimization Problems with DC constraints
This paper investigates the relation between sequential convex programming
(SCP) as, e.g., defined in [24] and DC (difference of two convex functions)
programming. We first present an SCP algorithm for solving nonlinear
optimization problems with DC constraints and prove its convergence. Then we
combine the proposed algorithm with a relaxation technique to handle
inconsistent linearizations. Numerical tests are performed to investigate the
behaviour of the class of algorithms.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
On barrier and modified barrier multigrid methods for 3d topology optimization
One of the challenges encountered in optimization of mechanical structures,
in particular in what is known as topology optimization, is the size of the
problems, which can easily involve millions of variables. A basic example is
the minimum compliance formulation of the variable thickness sheet (VTS)
problem, which is equivalent to a convex problem. We propose to solve the VTS
problem by the Penalty-Barrier Multiplier (PBM) method, introduced by R.\
Polyak and later studied by Ben-Tal and Zibulevsky and others. The most
computationally expensive part of the algorithm is the solution of linear
systems arising from the Newton method used to minimize a generalized augmented
Lagrangian. We use a special structure of the Hessian of this Lagrangian to
reduce the size of the linear system and to convert it to a form suitable for a
standard multigrid method. This converted system is solved approximately by a
multigrid preconditioned MINRES method. The proposed PBM algorithm is compared
with the optimality criteria (OC) method and an interior point (IP) method,
both using a similar iterative solver setup. We apply all three methods to
different loading scenarios. In our experiments, the PBM method clearly
outperforms the other methods in terms of computation time required to achieve
a certain degree of accuracy
Solving Mathematical Programs with Equilibrium Constraints as Nonlinear Programming: A New Framework
We present a new framework for the solution of mathematical programs with
equilibrium constraints (MPECs). In this algorithmic framework, an MPECs is
viewed as a concentration of an unconstrained optimization which minimizes the
complementarity measure and a nonlinear programming with general constraints. A
strategy generalizing ideas of Byrd-Omojokun's trust region method is used to
compute steps. By penalizing the tangential constraints into the objective
function, we circumvent the problem of not satisfying MFCQ. A trust-funnel-like
strategy is used to balance the improvements on feasibility and optimality. We
show that, under MPEC-MFCQ, if the algorithm does not terminate in finite
steps, then at least one accumulation point of the iterates sequence is an
S-stationary point
A Simple and Efficient Algorithm for Nonlinear Model Predictive Control
We present PANOC, a new algorithm for solving optimal control problems
arising in nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC). A usual approach to this
type of problems is sequential quadratic programming (SQP), which requires the
solution of a quadratic program at every iteration and, consequently, inner
iterative procedures. As a result, when the problem is ill-conditioned or the
prediction horizon is large, each outer iteration becomes computationally very
expensive. We propose a line-search algorithm that combines forward-backward
iterations (FB) and Newton-type steps over the recently introduced
forward-backward envelope (FBE), a continuous, real-valued, exact merit
function for the original problem. The curvature information of Newton-type
methods enables asymptotic superlinear rates under mild assumptions at the
limit point, and the proposed algorithm is based on very simple operations:
access to first-order information of the cost and dynamics and low-cost direct
linear algebra. No inner iterative procedure nor Hessian evaluation is
required, making our approach computationally simpler than SQP methods. The
low-memory requirements and simple implementation make our method particularly
suited for embedded NMPC applications
MM Algorithms for Geometric and Signomial Programming
This paper derives new algorithms for signomial programming, a generalization
of geometric programming. The algorithms are based on a generic principle for
optimization called the MM algorithm. In this setting, one can apply the
geometric-arithmetic mean inequality and a supporting hyperplane inequality to
create a surrogate function with parameters separated. Thus, unconstrained
signomial programming reduces to a sequence of one-dimensional minimization
problems. Simple examples demonstrate that the MM algorithm derived can
converge to a boundary point or to one point of a continuum of minimum points.
Conditions under which the minimum point is unique or occurs in the interior of
parameter space are proved for geometric programming. Convergence to an
interior point occurs at a linear rate. Finally, the MM framework easily
accommodates equality and inequality constraints of signomial type. For the
most important special case, constrained quadratic programming, the MM
algorithm involves very simple updates.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur
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