Parametric variational solution of linear-quadratic optimal control problems with control inequality constraints

A parametric variational principle and the corresponding numerical algo- rithm are proposed to solve a linear-quadratic （LQ） optimal control problem with control inequality constraints. Based on the parametric variational principle, this control prob- lem is transformed into a set of Hamiltonian canonical equations coupled with the linear complementarity equations, which are solved by a linear complementarity solver in the discrete-time domain. The costate variable information is also evaluated by the proposed method. The parametric variational algorithm proposed in this paper is suitable for both time-invariant and time-varying systems. Two numerical examples are used to test the validity of the proposed method. The proposed algorithm is used to astrodynamics to solve a practical optimal control problem for rendezvousing spacecrafts with a finite low thrust. The numerical simulations show that the parametric variational algorithm is ef- fective for LQ optimal control problems with control inequality constraints.

Stabilization of linear time-varying systems with state and input constraints using convex optimization

The stabilization problem of linear time-varying systems with both state and input constraints is considered. Sufficient conditions for the existence of the solution to this problem are derived and a gain-switched（gain-scheduled） state feedback control scheme is built to stabilize the constrained timevarying system. The design problem is transformed to a series of convex feasibility problems which can be solved efficiently. A design example is given to illustrate the effect of the proposed algorithm.

A linear complementarity model for multibody systems with frictional unilateral and bilateral constraints

The Lagrange-I equations and measure differential equations for multibody systems with unilateral and bilateral constraints are constructed. For bilateral constraints, frictional forces and their impulses contain the products of the filled-in relay function induced by Coulomb friction and the absolute values of normal constraint reactions. With the time-stepping impulse-velocity scheme, the measure differential equations are discretized. The equations of horizontal linear complementarity problems （HLCPs）, which are used to compute the impulses, are constructed by decomposing the absolute function and the filled-in relay function. These HLCP equations degenerate into equations of LCPs for frictional unilateral constraints, or HLCPs for frictional bilateral constraints. Finally, a numerical simulation for multibody systems with both unilateral and bilateral constraints is presented.

Discrete differential evolution algorithm for integer linear bilevel programming problems

A discrete differential evolution algorithm combined with the branch and bound method is developed to solve the integer linear bilevel programming problems, in which both upper level and lower level variables are forced to be integer. An integer coding for upper level variables is adopted, and then a discrete differential evolution algorithm with an improved feasibility-based comparison is developed to directly explore the integer solution at the upper level. For a given upper level integer variable, the lower level integer programming problem is solved by the existing branch and bound algorithm to obtain the optimal integer solution at the lower level. In the same framework of the algorithm, two other constraint handling methods, i.e. the penalty function method and the feasibility-based comparison method are also tested. The experimental results demonstrate that the discrete differential evolution algorithm with different constraint handling methods is effective in finding the global optimal integer solutions, but the improved constraint handling method performs better than two compared constraint handling methods.

A New Method of Moving Asymptotes for Large-scale Linearly Equality-constrained Minimization

A new method of moving asymptotes for large-scale minimization subject to linear equality constraints is discussed. In this method, linear equality constraints are deleted with null space technique and the descending direction is obtained by solving a convex separable subproblem of moving asymptotes in each iteration. New rules for controlling the asymptotes parameters are designed and the global convergence of the method under some reasonable conditions is established and proved. The numerical results show that the new method may be capable of processing some large scale problems.

FINDING THE STRICTLY LOCAL AND ε-GLOBAL MINIMIZERS OF CONCAVE MINIMIZATION WITH LINEAR CONSTRAINTS

This paper considers the concave minimization problem with linear constrailits,proposes a technique which may avoid the unsuitable Karush-Kuhn-Tucker poiats,then combines this technique with nank-Wolfe method and simplex method to form a pivoting method which can determine a strictly local minimizer of the problem in a finite number of iterations. Basing on strictly local minimizers, a new cutting plane method is proposed. Under some mild conditions, the new cutting plane method is proved to be finitely terminated at an θ-global minimizer of the problem.

AN INTERIOR TRUST REGION ALGORITHM FOR NONLINEAR MINIMIZATION WITH LINEAR CONSTRAINTS

Presents information on a study which analyzed an interior trust-region-based algorithm for linearly constrained minimization problems. Optimality conditions for the linearly constrained minimization problem presented; Vectors for each updating step in the algorithm proposed; Establishment of the convergence properties of the proposed algorithm.

Efficient Algorithms for Generating Truncated Multivariate Normal Distributions

Sampling from a truncated multivariate normal distribution （TMVND） constitutes the core computational module in fitting many statistical and econometric models. We propose two efficient methods, an iterative data augmentation （DA） algorithm and a non-iterative inverse Bayes formulae （IBF） sampler, to simulate TMVND and generalize them to multivariate normal distributions with linear inequality constraints. By creating a Bayesian incomplete-data structure, the posterior step of the DA Mgorithm directly generates random vector draws as opposed to single element draws, resulting obvious computational advantage and easy coding with common statistical software packages such as S-PLUS, MATLAB and GAUSS. Furthermore, the DA provides a ready structure for implementing a fast EM algorithm to identify the mode of TMVND, which has many potential applications in statistical inference of constrained parameter problems. In addition, utilizing this mode as an intermediate result, the IBF sampling provides a novel alternative to Gibbs sampling and elimi- nares problems with convergence and possible slow convergence due to the high correlation between components of a TMVND. The DA algorithm is applied to a linear regression model with constrained parameters and is illustrated with a published data set. Numerical comparisons show that the proposed DA algorithm and IBF sampler are more efficient than the Gibbs sampler and the accept-reject algorithm.