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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

General interactive fixed-charge piecewise-linear programming using tabu search

Conference ·
OSTI ID:36056

A theoretical framework and a practical algorithm are presented to solve discontinuous piecewise linear optimization problems. The descent algorithm which is elaborated uses active-set and projected gradient approaches. It is a generalization of the ideas used by Conn to deal with non-smoothness in the l{sub 1} exact penalty function. We address a general (non-concave) form of the fixed-charge problem which involves moreover (non-separable) interactive fixed costs, i.e. the fixed cost of undertaking a task depends upon which other tasks are also undertaken. The inescapable non-convexity feature of discontinuous functions gives rise to the existence of several local optima, most of which are not interesting as solutions to practical problems. A tabu-search heuristic is implemented within the above active-set piecewise linear optimization algorithm, in order to look for a global minimum. The resulting algorithm is applied to randomly-generated interactive fixed-charge transportation problems.

OSTI ID:
36056
Report Number(s):
CONF-9408161--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English