An efficient algorithm for multi-dimensional nonlinear knapsack problems

Multi-dimensional nonlinear knapsack problem is a bounded nonlinear integer programming problem that maximizes a separable nondecreasing function subject to multiple separable nondecreasing constraints. This problem is often encountered in resource allocation, industrial planning and computer network. In this paper, a new convergent Lagrangian dual method was proposed for solving this problem. Cutting plane method was used to solve the dual problem and to compute the Lagrangian bounds of the primal problem. In order to eliminate the duality gap and thus to guarantee the convergence of the algorithm, domain cut technique was employed to remove certain integer boxes and partition the revised domain to a union of integer boxes. Extensive computational results show that the proposed method is efficient for solving large-scale multi-dimensional nonlinear knapsack problems. Our numerical results also indicate that the cutting plane method significantly outperforms the subgradient method as a dual search procedure.