Giovanni Giallombardo We study piecewise decomposition methods for mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (MPECs) for which all constraint functions are linear. At each iteration of a decomposition method, one step of a nonlinear programming scheme is applied to one piece of the MPEC to obtain the next iterate. Our goal is to understand global convergence to B-stationary … Read more
We introduce a new approach to minimizing a function defined as the pointwise maximum over finitely many convex real functions (next referred to as the “component functions”), with the aim of working on the basis of “incomplete knowledge” of the objective function. In fact, a descent algorithm is proposed which does not necessarily require at … Read more
We introduce an algorithm to minimize a function of several variables with no convexity nor smoothness assumptions. The main peculiarity of our approach is the use of an the objective function model which is the difference of two piecewise affine convex functions. Bundling and trust region concepts are embedded into the algorithm. Convergence of the … Read more
We describe an extension of the classical cutting plane algorithm to tackle the unconstrained minimization of a nonconvex, not necessarily differentiable function of several variables. The method is based on the construction of both a lower and an upper polyhedral approximation to the objective function and it is related to the use of the concept … Read more