Open Access

In this article, we extend the time-domain decomposition method described by Lagnese and Leugering (2003) to semilinear optimal control problems for hyperbolic balance laws with spatio-temporal varying coefficients. We provide the design of the iterative method applied to the global first-order optimality system, prove its convergence, and derive an a posteriori error estimate. The analysis is done entirely on the continuous level. A distinguishing feature of the method is that the decomposed optimality system can be interpreted as an optimality system of a local "virtual" optimal control problem. Thus, the iterative time-domain decomposition of the optimality system can be interpreted as an iterative parallel scheme for virtual optimal control problems on the subintervals. A typical example and further comments are given to show the range of potential applications. Moreover, we provide some numerical experiments to give a first interpretation of the role of the parameters involved in the iterative process.

The operation of gas pipeline flow with high pressure and small Mach numbers allows to model the flow by a semilinear hyperbolic system of partial differential equations. In this paper we present a number of transient and stationary analytical solutions of this model. They are used to discuss and clarify why a pde model is necessary to handle certain dynamic situations in the operation of gas transportation networks. We show that adequate numerical discretizations can capture the dynamical behavior sufficiently accurate. We also present examples that show that in certain cases an optimization approach that is based upon multi-period optimization of steady states does not lead to approximations that converge to the optimal state.

Decomposition can be the method of choice to deal with optimization problems that contain hard to solve model structures or that are of large scale. The main idea is to decompose the problematic aspects of the problem into multiple smaller blocks that can be solved more easily. Here, the challenge is to combine the single pieces to a solution that is not only feasible but maybe even optimal for the original problem. In many cases, this can be done by introducing an iteration that eventually converges to a desired solution. In this cumulative dissertation, we present several iterative decomposition methods that are tailored to different types of optimization models and use distinct approaches to split up the problems. Our main motivation for this originates from the optimization of gas transport networks, where we encounter partial differential equations as well as discrete control decisions. Additionally, we engage in the related field of district heating network optimization to study the challenges arising from large-scale and fully discretized systems as well as undesirable model features such as, e.g., complementarity constraints. Here, we introduce two temperature mixing models that are well suited for optimization and a number of techniques to speed up the solution process, which are applied in numerical experiments. As a next step, we develop an iterative time-domain decomposition method that is applied to optimal control problems subject to semilinear hyperbolic systems of partial differential equations. For this, we derive first-order optimality conditions that are then split using a non-overlapping decomposition of the time horizon. We exploit the fact that the resulting systems have a primal interpretation as so-called virtual control problems. We prove the convergence of the iterative method and develop a posteriori error estimates. Later, we extend the scheme to systems of ordinary differential equations with mixed- integer controls by using Pontryagin’s maximum principle. We again show the convergence and conduct a numerical case study. Moreover, we use a consensus-based version of the classic penalty alternating direction method to solve tailored reformulations of transient gas network problems that allow us to minimize the number of coupling constraints between sub-problems. Here, we utilize the quasi-separable structure of the network to decompose it into sub-networks with more desirable properties. We also discuss different decomposition strategies and test them in a numerical case study. Finally, we present a successive linear relaxation method for mixed-integer nonlinear problems with multivariate Lipschitz continuous nonlinearities. The distinguishing feature of this algorithm is that it exploits no properties of the nonlinearities besides the Lipschitz constants. Therefore, the method is applicable for problems with non-convex or even non-differentiable constraints. The nonlinearities do not even need to be given in a closed form, which allows us to integrate black-box constraints into the model. We prove that the algorithm converges to an approximate global optimum and we provide a worst-case estimate for the number of iterations. The iterative method is applied to stationary gas transport problems, where implicitly given solutions of the differential equations are modeled via black-box constraints.

We consider dynamic gas transport optimization problems, which lead to large-scale and nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems (MINLPs) on graphs. Usually, the resulting instances are too challenging to be solved by state-of-the-art MINLP solvers. In this paper, we use graph decompositions to obtain multiple optimization problems on smaller blocks, which can be solved in parallel and which may result in simpler classes of optimization problems since not every block necessarily contains mixed-integer or nonlinear aspects. For achieving feasibility at the interfaces of the several blocks, we employ a tailored consensus-based penalty alternating direction method. Our numerical results show that such decomposition techniques can outperform the baseline approach of just solving the overall MINLP from scratch. However, a complete answer to the question of how to decompose MINLPs on graphs in dependence of the given model is still an open topic for future research.