Lorenz T. Biegler - Böcker

Inverse problems and optimal design have come of age as a consequence of the availability of better, more accurate, and more efficient simulation packages. Many of these simulators, which can run on small workstations, can capture the complicated behavior of the physical systems they are modeling, and have become commonplace tools in engineering and science. There is a great desire to use them as part of a process by which measured field data are analyzed or by which design of a product is automated. A major obstacle in doing precisely this is that one is ultimately confronted with a large-scale optimization problem. This volume contains expository articles on both inverse problems and design problems formulated as optimization. Each paper describes the physical problem in some detail and is meant to be accessible to researchers in optimization as well as those who work in applied areas where optimization is a key tool. What emerges in the presentations is that there are features about the problem that must be taken into account in posing the objective function, and in choosing an optimization strategy.In particular there are certain structures peculiar to the problems that deserve special treatment, and there is ample opportunity for parallel computation. THIS IS BACK COVER TEXT!!! Inverse problems and optimal design have come of age as a consequence of the availability of better, more accurate, and more efficient, simulation packages. The problem of determining the parameters of a physical system from

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications LARGE-SCALE OPTIMIZATION WITH APPLICATIONS, PART II: OPTIMAL DESIGN AND CONTROL is one of the three volumes based on the proceedings of the 1995 IMA three­ week Summer Program on "Large-Scale Optimization with Applications to Inverse Problems, Optimal Control and Design, and Molecular and Struc­ tural Optimization." The other two related proceedings appeared as Vol­ ume 92: Large-Scale Optirpization with Applications, Part I: Optimization in Inverse Problems and Design and Volume 94: Large-Scale Optimization with Applications, Part III: Molecular Structure and Optimization. We would like to thank Lorenz T. Biegler, Thomas F. Coleman, An­ drew R. Conn, and Fadil N. Santosa for their excellent work as organizers of the meetings and for editing the proceedings. We also take this opportunity to thank the National Science Founda­ tion (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Alfred P. Sloan support made the workshops possible.

Many important molecular conformation problems, such as protein folding, are expressed as global minimization problems. It is the fact that local minimization is insufficient, that markedly differentiates this volume from the previous two. Unfortunately, global minimization problems that result from models of molecular conformation are usually intractable. For example, simple 1-dimensional versions of distance conformation problems are NP-hard. Nevertheless, there has been significant recent progress in the design of promising heuristic strategies (often involving the use of high- performance parallel computers) for computing approximate global minimizers. The purpose of the sessions represented in this volume was to discuss the new algorithmic advances for global minimization in the context of protein folding and related molecular minimization problems. Emphasis was on practical shortcomings of current approaches, outstanding problems and questions, and the use of high-performance parallel computers.

This book addresses modern nonlinear programming (NLP) concepts and algorithms, especially as they apply to challenging applications in chemical process engineering. The author provides a firm grounding in fundamental NLP properties and algorithms, and relates them to real-world problem classes in process optimization, thus making the material understandable and useful to chemical engineers and experts in mathematical optimization.Nonlinear Programming shows readers which NLP methods are best suited for specific applications, how large-scale problems should be formulated and what features of these problems should be emphasized, and how existing NLP methods can be extended to exploit specific structures of large-scale optimization models.

Many important molecular conformation problems, such as protein folding, are expressed as global minimization problems. It is the fact that local minimization is insufficient, that markedly differentiates this volume from the previous two. Unfortunately, global minimization problems that result from models of molecular conformation are usually intractable. For example, simple 1-dimensional versions of distance conformation problems are NP-hard. Nevertheless, there has been significant recent progress in the design of promising heuristic strategies (often involving the use of high- performance parallel computers) for computing approximate global minimizers. The purpose of the sessions represented in this volume was to discuss the new algorithmic advances for global minimization in the context of protein folding and related molecular minimization problems. Emphasis was on practical shortcomings of current approaches, outstanding problems and questions, and the use of high-performance parallel computers.

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications LARGE-SCALE OPTIMIZATION WITH APPLICATIONS, PART II: OPTIMAL DESIGN AND CONTROL is one of the three volumes based on the proceedings of the 1995 IMA three­ week Summer Program on "Large-Scale Optimization with Applications to Inverse Problems, Optimal Control and Design, and Molecular and Struc­ tural Optimization." The other two related proceedings appeared as Vol­ ume 92: Large-Scale Optirpization with Applications, Part I: Optimization in Inverse Problems and Design and Volume 94: Large-Scale Optimization with Applications, Part III: Molecular Structure and Optimization. We would like to thank Lorenz T. Biegler, Thomas F. Coleman, An­ drew R. Conn, and Fadil N. Santosa for their excellent work as organizers of the meetings and for editing the proceedings. We also take this opportunity to thank the National Science Founda­ tion (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Alfred P. Sloan support made the workshops possible.

Inverse problems and optimal design have come of age as a consequence of the availability of better, more accurate, and more efficient simulation packages. Many of these simulators, which can run on small workstations, can capture the complicated behavior of the physical systems they are modeling, and have become commonplace tools in engineering and science. There is a great desire to use them as part of a process by which measured field data are analyzed or by which design of a product is automated. A major obstacle in doing precisely this is that one is ultimately confronted with a large-scale optimization problem. This volume contains expository articles on both inverse problems and design problems formulated as optimization. Each paper describes the physical problem in some detail and is meant to be accessible to researchers in optimization as well as those who work in applied areas where optimization is a key tool. What emerges in the presentations is that there are features about the problem that must be taken into account in posing the objective function, and in choosing an optimization strategy. In particular there are certain structures peculiar to the problems that deserve special treatment, and there is ample opportunity for parallel computation. THIS IS BACK COVER TEXT!!! Inverse problems and optimal design have come of age as a consequence of the availability of better, more accurate, and more efficient, simulation packages. The problem of determining the parameters of a physical system from