Minimizing and maximizing a linear objective function under a fuzzy max⁡−∗\max -\ast relational equation and an inequality constraint

summary:This paper provides an extension of results connected with the problem of the optimization of a linear objective function subject to $\max-\ast$ fuzzy relational equations and an inequality constraint, where $\ast$ is an operation. This research is important because the knowledge and the algorithms presented in the paper can be used in various optimization processes. Previous articles describe an important problem of minimizing a linear objective function under a fuzzy $\max-\ast$ relational equation and an inequality constraint, where $\ast$ is the $t$-norm or mean. The authors present results that generalize this outcome, so the linear optimization problem can be used with any continuous increasing operation with a zero element where $\ast$ includes in particular the previously studied operations. Moreover, operation $\ast$ does not need to be a t-norm nor a pseudo-$t$-norm. Due to the fact that optimal solutions are constructed from the greatest and minimal solutions of a $\max-\ast$ relational equation or inequalities, this article presents a method to compute them. We note that the linear optimization problem is valid for both minimization and maximization problems. Therefore, for the optimization problem, we present results to find the largest and the smallest value of the objective function. To illustrate this problem a numerical example is provided

An exact algorithm for linear optimization problem subject to max-product fuzzy relational inequalities with fuzzy constraints

Fuzzy relational inequalities with fuzzy constraints (FRI-FC) are the generalized form of fuzzy relational inequalities (FRI) in which fuzzy inequality replaces ordinary inequality in the constraints. Fuzzy constraints enable us to attain optimal points (called super-optima) that are better solutions than those resulted from the resolution of the similar problems with ordinary inequality constraints. This paper considers the linear objective function optimization with respect to max-product FRI-FC problems. It is proved that there is a set of optimization problems equivalent to the primal problem. Based on the algebraic structure of the primal problem and its equivalent forms, some simplification operations are presented to convert the main problem into a more simplified one. Finally, by some appropriate mathematical manipulations, the main problem is transformed into an optimization model whose constraints are linear. The proposed linearization method not only provides a super-optimum (that is better solution than ordinary feasible optimal solutions) but also finds the best super-optimum for the main problem. The current approach is compared with our previous work and some well-known heuristic algorithms by applying them to random test problems in different sizes.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures, 7 table

An algorithm for solving fuzzy relation programming with the max-t composition operator

This paper studies the problem of minimizing a linear objective function subject to max-T fuzzy relation equation constraints where T is a special class of pseudot-norms. Some sufficient conditions are presented for determination of its optimal solutions. Some procedures are also suggested to simplify the original problem. Some sufficient conditions are given for uniqueness of its optimal solution. Finally, an algorithm is proposed to find its optimal solution.Publisher's Versio

Methods in Industrial Biotechnology for Chemical Engineers

In keeping with the definition that biotechnology is really no more than a name given to a set of techniques and processes, the authors apply some set of fuzzy techniques to chemical industry problems such as finding the proper proportion of raw mix to control pollution, to study flow rates, to find out the better quality of products. We use fuzzy control theory, fuzzy neural networks, fuzzy relational equations, genetic algorithms to these problems for solutions. When the solution to the problem can have certain concepts or attributes as indeterminate, the only model that can tackle such a situation is the neutrosophic model. The authors have also used these models in this book to study the use of biotechnology in chemical industries. This book has six chapters. First chapter gives a brief description of biotechnology. Second chapter deals will proper proportion of mix of raw materials in cement industries to minimize pollution using fuzzy control theory. Chapter three gives the method of determination of temperature set point for crude oil in oil refineries. Chapter four studies the flow rates in chemical industries using fuzzy neutral networks. Chapter five gives the method of minimization of waste gas flow in chemical industries using fuzzy linear programming. The final chapter suggests when in these studies indeterminancy is an attribute or concept involved, the notion of neutrosophic methods can be adopted.Comment: 125 pages, 20 figure

Dealing with non-metric dissimilarities in fuzzy central clustering algorithms

Clustering is the problem of grouping objects on the basis of a similarity measure among them. Relational clustering methods can be employed when a feature-based representation of the objects is not available, and their description is given in terms of pairwise (dis)similarities. This paper focuses on the relational duals of fuzzy central clustering algorithms, and their application in situations when patterns are represented by means of non-metric pairwise dissimilarities. Symmetrization and shift operations have been proposed to transform the dissimilarities among patterns from non-metric to metric. In this paper, we analyze how four popular fuzzy central clustering algorithms are affected by such transformations. The main contributions include the lack of invariance to shift operations, as well as the invariance to symmetrization. Moreover, we highlight the connections between relational duals of central clustering algorithms and central clustering algorithms in kernel-induced spaces. One among the presented algorithms has never been proposed for non-metric relational clustering, and turns out to be very robust to shift operations. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Unsupervised and semi-supervised fuzzy clustering with multiple kernels.

For real-world clustering tasks, the input data is typically not easily separable due to the highly complex data structure or when clusters vary in size, density and shape. Recently, kernel-based clustering has been proposed to perform clustering in a higher-dimensional feature space spanned by embedding maps and corresponding kernel functions. Although good results were obtained using the Gaussian kernel function, its performance depends on the selection of the scaling parameter among an extensive range of possibilities. This step is often heavily influenced by prior knowledge about the data and by the patterns we expect to discover. Unfortunately, it is often unclear which kernels are more suitable for a particular task. The problem is aggravated for many real-world clustering applications, in which the distributions of the different clusters in the feature space exhibit large variations. Thus, in the absence of a priori knowledge, a single kernel selected from a predefined group is sometimes insufficient to represent the data. One way to learn optimal scaling parameters is through an exhaustive search of one optimal scaling parameter for each cluster. However, this approach is not practical since it is computationally expensive, especially when the data includes a large number of clusters and when the dynamic range of possible values of the scaling parameters is large. Moreover, the evaluation of the resulting partition in order to select the optimal parameters is not an easy task. To overcome the above drawbacks, we introduce two novel fuzzy clustering techniques that use Multiple Kernel Learning to provide an elegant solution for parameter selection. The Fuzzy C-Means with Multiple Kernels algorithm (FCMK) simultaneously finds the optimal partition and the cluster-dependent kernel combination weights that reflect the intrinsic structure of the data. The Relational Fuzzy Clustering with Multiple Kernels (RFCMK) learns the kernel combination weights by optimizing the relational dissimilarities. Consequently, the learned kernel combination weights reflect the relative density, size, and position of each cluster with respect to the other clusters. We also extended FCMK and RFCMK to the semi-supervised paradigms. We show that the incorporation of prior knowledge in the unsupervised clustering task in the form of a small set of constraints on which instances should or should not reside in the same cluster, guides the unsupervised approaches to a better partitioning of the data and avoid local minima, especially for high dimensional real world data. All of the proposed algorithms are optimized iteratively by dynamically updating the partition and the kernel combination weights in each iteration. This makes these algorithms simple and fast. Moreover, our algorithms are formulated to work on both vector and relational data. This makes them applicable to data where objects cannot be represented by vectors or when clusters of similar objects cannot be represented efficiently by a single prototype. We also introduced two relational fuzzy clustering with multiple kernel algorithms for large data to deal with the scalability issue of RFCMK. The random sample and extend RFCMK (rseRFCMK) computes cluster prototypes from a smaller sample of randomly selected objects, and then extends the partition to the remainder of the data. The single pass RFCMK (spRFCMK) sequentially loads manageable sized chunks, clustering the chunks in a single pass, and then combining the results from each chunk. Our extensive experiments show that RFCMK and SS-RFCMK outperform existing algorithms. In particular, we show that when data include clusters with various intrinsic structures and densities, learning kernel weights that vary over clusters is crucial in obtaining a good partition

Robust fuzzyclustering for object recognition and classification of relational data

Prototype based fuzzy clustering algorithms have unique ability to partition the data while detecting multiple clusters simultaneously. However since real data is often contaminated with noise, the clustering methods need to be made robust to be useful in practice. This dissertation focuses on robust detection of multiple clusters from noisy range images for object recognition. Dave\u27s noise clustering (NC) method has been shown to make prototype-based fuzzy clustering techniques robust. In this work, NC is generalized and the new NC membership is shown to be a product of fuzzy c-means (FCM) membership and robust M-estimator weight (or possibilistic membership). Thus the generalized NC approach is shown to have the partitioning ability of FCM and robustness of M-estimators. Since the NC (or FCM) algorithms are based on fixed-point iteration technique, they suffer from the problem of initializations. To overcome this problem, the sampling based robust LMS algorithm is considered by extending it to fuzzy c-LMS algorithm for detecting multiple clusters. The concept of repeated evidence has been incorporated to increase the speed of the new approach. The main problem with the LMS approach is the need for ordering the distance data. To eliminate this problem, a novel sampling based robust algorithm is proposed following the NC principle, called the NLS method, that directly searches for clusters in the maximum density region of the range data without requiring the specification of number of clusters. The NC concept is also introduced to several fuzzy methods for robust classification of relational data for pattern recognition. This is also extended to non-Euclidean relational data. The resulting algorithms are used for object recognition from range images as well as for identification of bottleneck parts while creating desegregated cells of machine/ components in cellular manufacturing and group technology (GT) applications