Advances and Trends in Optimization with Engineering Applications


Book Description

Optimization is of critical importance in engineering. Engineers constantly strive for the best possible solutions, the most economical use of limited resources, and the greatest efficiency. As system complexity increases, these goals mandate the use of state-of-the-art optimization techniques. In recent years, the theory and methodology of optimization have seen revolutionary improvements. Moreover, the exponential growth in computational power, along with the availability of multicore computing with virtually unlimited memory and storage capacity, has fundamentally changed what engineers can do to optimize their designs. This is a two-way process: engineers benefit from developments in optimization methodology, and challenging new classes of optimization problems arise from novel engineering applications. Advances and Trends in Optimization with Engineering Applications reviews 10 major areas of optimization and related engineering applications, providing a broad summary of state-of-the-art optimization techniques most important to engineering practice. Each part provides a clear overview of a specific area and discusses a range of real-world problems. The book provides a solid foundation for engineers and mathematical optimizers alike who want to understand the importance of optimization methods to engineering and the capabilities of these methods.




Convex Optimization


Book Description

This monograph presents the main complexity theorems in convex optimization and their corresponding algorithms. It begins with the fundamental theory of black-box optimization and proceeds to guide the reader through recent advances in structural optimization and stochastic optimization. The presentation of black-box optimization, strongly influenced by the seminal book by Nesterov, includes the analysis of cutting plane methods, as well as (accelerated) gradient descent schemes. Special attention is also given to non-Euclidean settings (relevant algorithms include Frank-Wolfe, mirror descent, and dual averaging), and discussing their relevance in machine learning. The text provides a gentle introduction to structural optimization with FISTA (to optimize a sum of a smooth and a simple non-smooth term), saddle-point mirror prox (Nemirovski's alternative to Nesterov's smoothing), and a concise description of interior point methods. In stochastic optimization it discusses stochastic gradient descent, mini-batches, random coordinate descent, and sublinear algorithms. It also briefly touches upon convex relaxation of combinatorial problems and the use of randomness to round solutions, as well as random walks based methods.




Recent Trends in Optimization Theory and Applications


Book Description

World Scientific Series in Applicable Analysis (WSSIAA) aims at reporting new developments of high mathematical standard and current interest. Each volume in the series shall be devoted to the mathematical analysis that has been applied or potentially applicable to the solutions of scientific, engineering, and social problems. This volume contains 30 research articles on the theory of optimization and its applications by the leading scientists in the field. It is hoped that the material in the present volume will open new vistas in research.Contributors: B D O Anderson, M Bertaja, O J Boxma, O Burdakov, A Cantoni, D J Clements, B D Craven, J B Cruz, Jr., P Diamond, S V Drakunov, Y G Evtushenko, N M Filatov, I Galligani, J C Geromel, F Giannessi, M J Grimble, G O Guardabassi, D-W Gu, C H Houpis, D G Hull, C Itiki, X Jian, M A Johnson, R E Kalaba, J C Kalkkuhl, M R Katebi, T J Kim, P Kloeden, T Kobylarz, A J Laub, C S Lee, G Leitmann, B-G Liu, J Liu, Z-Q Luo, K A Lurie, P Maponi, J B Matson, A Mess, G Pacelli, M Pachter, I Postlethwaite, T Rapcsak, M C Recchioni, Y Sakawa, S V Savastyuk, K Schittkowski, Y Shi, M A Sikora, D D Siljak, K L Teo, C Tovey, P Tseng, F E Udwadia, H Unbehauen, A Vladimirov, B Vo, J F Whidborne, R Xu, P L Yu, V G Zhadan, F Zirilli.




Meta-Heuristics


Book Description

Meta-Heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimizations comprises a carefully refereed selection of extended versions of the best papers presented at the Second Meta-Heuristics Conference (MIC 97). The selected articles describe the most recent developments in theory and applications of meta-heuristics, heuristics for specific problems, and comparative case studies. The book is divided into six parts, grouped mainly by the techniques considered. The extensive first part with twelve papers covers tabu search and its application to a great variety of well-known combinatorial optimization problems (including the resource-constrained project scheduling problem and vehicle routing problems). In the second part we find one paper where tabu search and simulated annealing are investigated comparatively and two papers which consider hybrid methods combining tabu search with genetic algorithms. The third part has four papers on genetic and evolutionary algorithms. Part four arrives at a new paradigm within meta-heuristics. The fifth part studies the behavior of parallel local search algorithms mainly from a tabu search perspective. The final part examines a great variety of additional meta-heuristics topics, including neural networks and variable neighbourhood search as well as guided local search. Furthermore, the integration of meta-heuristics with the branch-and-bound paradigm is investigated.




Advances in Structural Engineering—Optimization


Book Description

This book is an up-to-date source for computation applications of optimization, prediction via artificial intelligence methods, and evaluation of metaheuristic algorithm with different structural applications. As the current interest of researcher, metaheuristic algorithms are a high interest topic area since advance and non-optimized problems via mathematical methods are challenged by the development of advance and modified algorithms. The artificial intelligence (AI) area is also important in predicting optimum results by skipping long iterative optimization processes. The machine learning used in generation of AI models also needs optimum results of metaheuristic-based approaches. This book is a great source to researcher, graduate students, and bachelor students who gain project about structural optimization. Differently from the academic use, the chapter that emphasizes different scopes and methods can take the interest and help engineer working in design and production of structural engineering projects.




Trends in Developing Metaheuristics, Algorithms, and Optimization Approaches


Book Description

Developments in metaheuristics continue to advance computation beyond its traditional methods. With groundwork built on multidisciplinary research findings; metaheuristics, algorithms, and optimization approaches uses memory manipulations in order to take full advantage of strategic level problem solving. Trends in Developing Metaheuristics, Algorithms, and Optimization Approaches provides insight on the latest advances and analysis of technologies in metaheuristics computing. Offering widespread coverage on topics such as genetic algorithms, differential evolution, and ant colony optimization, this book aims to be a forum researchers, practitioners, and students who wish to learn and apply metaheuristic computing.




Distributed Optimization and Statistical Learning Via the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers


Book Description

Surveys the theory and history of the alternating direction method of multipliers, and discusses its applications to a wide variety of statistical and machine learning problems of recent interest, including the lasso, sparse logistic regression, basis pursuit, covariance selection, support vector machines, and many others.




Network Optimization and Control


Book Description

Network Optimization and Control is the ideal starting point for a mature reader with little background on the subject of congestion control to understand the basic concepts underlying network resource allocation.




Optimization with Sparsity-Inducing Penalties


Book Description

Sparse estimation methods are aimed at using or obtaining parsimonious representations of data or models. They were first dedicated to linear variable selection but numerous extensions have now emerged such as structured sparsity or kernel selection. It turns out that many of the related estimation problems can be cast as convex optimization problems by regularizing the empirical risk with appropriate nonsmooth norms. Optimization with Sparsity-Inducing Penalties presents optimization tools and techniques dedicated to such sparsity-inducing penalties from a general perspective. It covers proximal methods, block-coordinate descent, reweighted ?2-penalized techniques, working-set and homotopy methods, as well as non-convex formulations and extensions, and provides an extensive set of experiments to compare various algorithms from a computational point of view. The presentation of Optimization with Sparsity-Inducing Penalties is essentially based on existing literature, but the process of constructing a general framework leads naturally to new results, connections and points of view. It is an ideal reference on the topic for anyone working in machine learning and related areas.




Online Learning and Online Convex Optimization


Book Description

Online Learning and Online Convex Optimization is a modern overview of online learning. Its aim is to provide the reader with a sense of some of the interesting ideas and in particular to underscore the centrality of convexity in deriving efficient online learning algorithms.