Product Description: Der vorliegende Band gibt hauptsächlich Vorträge wieder, die in der Zeit vom 23. bis 27. Februar 1976 auf einem am Mathematischen Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach abgehaltenen Kolloquium über «Optimierung bei graphentheo­ retischen und ganzzahligen Problemen» gehalten wurden...read more

Product Description: This book presents a first attempt to systematically collect, classify and solve various continuous-time scheduling problems. The classes of problems distinguish scheduling by the number of machines and products, production constraints and performance measures...read more

Product Description: The major purpose of this book is to introduce the main concepts of discrete optimization problems which have a finite number of feasible solutions. Following common practice, we term this topic combinatorial optimization. There are now a number of excellent graduate-level textbooks on combina­ torial optimization...read more

Product Description: Am Mathematischen Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach fand in der Zeit vom 14. bis 20. November 1971 eine Tagung uber unter der Leitung der Unterzeichneten statt. Seit der vorangegangenen Tagung im Sommer 1967 ist es gelungen, weitere Problem klassen der numerischen Behandlung zuganglich zu machen...read more

Product Description: Am Mathematischen Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach fand in der Zeit vom 18. bis 24. November 1973 eine Tagung über «Numerische Methoden bei Optimierungsaufgaben» unter der Leitung der Unterzeichneten statt, auf der naturgemäß die Fortschritte gegenüber den 1967, 1969 und 1971 durchgeführten Tagungen mit gleichem Titel im Vordergrund des Interesses standen...read more

Product Description: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. (Albert Einstein, Readers Digest, 1977) The modern practice of creating technical systems and technological processes of high effi.ciency besides the employment of new principles, new materials, new physical effects and other new solutions ( which is very traditional and plays the key role in the selection of the general structure of the object to be designed) also includes the choice of the best combination for the set of parameters (geometrical sizes, electrical and strength characteristics, etc...read more

Optimization is of central concern to a number of discip­ lines. Operations Research and Decision Theory are often consi­ dered to be identical with optimizationo But also in other areas such as engineering design, regional policy, logistics and many others, the search for optimal solutions is one of the prime goals. The methods and models which have been used over the last decades in these areas have primarily been "hard" or "crisp", i. e. the solutions were considered to be either fea­ sible or unfeasible, either above a certain aspiration level or below. This dichotomous structure of methods very often forced the modeller to approximate real problem situations of the more-or-less type by yes-or-no-type models, the solutions of which might turn out not to be the solutions to the real prob­ lems. This is particularly true if the problem under considera­ tion includes vaguely defined relationships, human evaluations, uncertainty due to inconsistent or incomplete evidence, if na­ tural language has to be modelled or if state variables can only be described approximately. Until recently, everything which was not known with cer­ tainty, i. e. which was not known to be either true or false or which was not known to either happen with certainty or to be impossible to occur, was modelled by means of probabilitieso This holds in particular for uncertainties concerning the oc­ currence of events.

Product Description: This book represents an extended and substantially revised version of my earlierbook, Optimal Control in Problems ofMathematical Physics,originally published in Russian in 1975. About 60% of the text has been completely revised and major additions have been included which have produced a practically new text...read more

Product Description: We are rarely asked to. make decisions based on only one criterion; most often, decisions are based on several usually confticting, criteria. In nature, if the design of a system evolves to some final, optimal state, then it must include a balance for the interaction of the system with its surroundings­ certainly a design based on a variety of criteria...read more

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Product Description: Global optimization is one of the fastest developing fields in mathematical optimization. In fact, an increasing number of remarkably efficient deterministic algorithms have been proposed in the last ten years for solving several classes of large scale specially structured problems encountered in such areas as chemical engineering, financial engineering, location and network optimization, production and inventory control, engineering design, computational geometry, and multi-objective and multi-level optimization...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Nonconvexity and nonsmoothness arise in a large class of engineering applica­ tions. In many cases of practical importance the possibilities offered by opti­ mization with its algorithms and heuristics can substantially improve the per­ formance and the range of applicability of classical computational mechanics algorithms. For a class of problems this approach is the only one that really works. The present book presents in a comprehensive way the application of opti­ mization algorithms and heuristics in smooth and nonsmooth mechanics. The necessity of this approach is presented to the reader through simple, represen­ tative examples. As things become more complex, the necessary material from convex and nonconvex optimization and from mechanics are introduced in a self-contained way. Unilateral contact and friction problems, adhesive contact and delamination problems, nonconvex elastoplasticity, fractal friction laws, frames with semi­ rigid connections, are among the applications which are treated in details here. Working algorithms are given for each application and are demonstrated by means of representative examples. The interested reader will find helpful references to up-to-date scientific and technical literature so that to be able to work on research or engineering topics which are not directly covered here.

Product Description: There is an ever-growing interest in control problems today, con­ nected with the urgent problems of the effective use of natural resources, manpower, materials, and technology. When referring to the most important achievements of science and technology in the 20th Century, one usually mentions the splitting of the atom, the exploration of space, and computer engineering...read more

This book shows how the Bayesian Approach (BA) improves well­ known heuristics by randomizing and optimizing their parameters. That is the Bayesian Heuristic Approach (BHA). The ten in-depth examples are designed to teach Operations Research using Internet. Each example is a simple representation of some impor­ tant family of real-life problems. The accompanying software can be run by remote Internet users. The supporting web-sites include software for Java, C++, and other lan­ guages. A theoretical setting is described in which one can discuss a Bayesian adaptive choice of heuristics for discrete and global optimization prob­ lems. The techniques are evaluated in the spirit of the average rather than the worst case analysis. In this context, "heuristics" are understood to be an expert opinion defining how to solve a family of problems of dis­ crete or global optimization. The term "Bayesian Heuristic Approach" means that one defines a set of heuristics and fixes some prior distribu­ tion on the results obtained. By applying BHA one is looking for the heuristic that reduces the average deviation from the global optimum. The theoretical discussions serve as an introduction to examples that are the main part of the book. All the examples are interconnected. Dif­ ferent examples illustrate different points of the general subject. How­ ever, one can consider each example separately, too.

Product Description: This comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization places special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. It is based on numerous courses on combinatorial optimization and specialized topics, mostly at graduate level...read more

Product Description: This comprehensive textbook on combinatorial optimization places special emphasis on theoretical results and algorithms with provably good performance, in contrast to heuristics. It is based on numerous courses on combinatorial optimization and specialized topics, mostly at graduate level...read more

Product Description: Arguably, many industrial optimization problems are of the multiobjective type. The present work, after providing a survey of the state of the art in multiobjective optimization, gives new insight into this important mathematical field by consequently taking up the viewpoint of differential geometry...read more

Product Description: Since the introduction of genetic algorithms in the 1970s, an enormous number of articles together with several significant monographs and books have been published on this methodology. As a result, genetic algorithms have made a major contribution to optimization, adaptation, and learning in a wide variety of unexpected fields...read more

Product Description: Controlled stochastic processes with discrete time form a very interest­ ing and meaningful field of research which attracts widespread attention. At the same time these processes are used for solving of many applied problems in the queueing theory, in mathematical economics...read more