LANS Informal Seminar: Sven Leyffer

Seminar Title: Mixed-Integer PDE-Constrained Optimization
Speaker: Sven Leyffer, Senior Computational Mathematician, Argonne National Laboratory

Date/Time: 2015-11-24 15:00
Location: Bldg 240 rm 1404/1405

Description:
Many complex scientific and engineering applications can be formulated
as optimization problems constrained by partial differential equations
(PDEs) with integer decision variables. Examples include the remediation
of contaminated sites and the maximization of oil recovery; the design
of next generation solar cells; the layout design of wind-farms; the
design and control of gas networks; disaster recovery; and topology
optimization. Until recently, these grand-challenge problems have been
regarded as numerically intractable. We are starting to dispel this
wide-held belief, motivated in part by emerging exascale computing
resources.

We will present emerging applications of mixed-integer PDE-constrained
optimization, review existing approaches to solve these problems, and
highlight their computational and mathematical challenges. We introduce
a new set of benchmark set for this challenging class of problems, and
present some early numerical experience using both mixed-integer
nonlinear solvers and heuristic techniques. Our results indicate that
this class of challenging problems can be solved.