TY - GEN A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai A1 - Mexi, Gioni A1 - Burdakov, Oleg A1 - Casselgren, Carl Johan A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Length-Constrained Cycle Partition with an Application to UAV Routing N2 - In this article, we discuss the Length-Constrained Cycle Partition Problem (LCCP). Besides edge weights, the undirected graph in LCCP features an individual critical weight value for each vertex. A cycle partition, i.e., a vertex disjoint cycle cover, is a feasible solution if the length of each cycle is not greater than the critical weight of each of the vertices in the cycle. The goal is to find a feasible partition with the minimum number of cycles. In this article, we discuss theoretical properties, preprocessing techniques, and two mixed-integer programming models (MIP) for LCCP both inspired by formulations for the closely related Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP). Further, we introduce conflict hypergraphs, whose cliques yield valid constraints for the MIP models. We conclude with a report on computational experiments conducted on (A)TSPLIB-based instances. As an example, we use a routing problem in which a fleet of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) patrols a set of areas. T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-30 Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-80489 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gotzes, Uwe A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai T1 - Bounding the final rank during a round robin tournament with integer programming JF - Operational Research N2 - This article is mainly motivated by the urge to answer two kinds of questions regarding the Bundesliga, which is Germany’s primary football (soccer) division having the highest average stadium attendance worldwide: “At any point in the season, what is the lowest final rank a certain team can achieve?” and “At any point in the season, what is the highest final rank a certain team can achieve?”. Although we focus on the Bundesliga in particular, the integer programming formulations we introduce to answer these questions can easily be adapted to a variety of other league systems and tournaments. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-020-00546-w VL - 1866-1505 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rehfeldt, Daniel A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Implications, conflicts, and reductions for Steiner trees T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-28 Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-80039 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai A1 - Hennings, Felix A1 - Zittel, Janina A1 - Gotzes, Uwe A1 - Spreckelsen, Eva-Maria A1 - Spreckelsen, Klaus A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - From Natural Gas towards Hydrogen - A Feasibility Study on Current Transport Network Infrastructure and its Technical Control N2 - This study examines the usability of a real-world, large-scale natural gas transport infrastructure for hydrogen transport. We investigate whether a converted network can transport the amounts of hydrogen necessary to satisfy current energy demands. After introducing an optimization model for the robust transient control of hydrogen networks, we conduct computational experiments based on real-world demand scenarios. Using a representative network, we demonstrate that replacing each turbo compressor unit by four parallel hydrogen compressors, each of them comprising multiple serial compression stages, and imposing stricter rules regarding the balancing of in- and outflow suffices to realize transport in a majority of scenarios. However, due to the reduced linepack there is an increased need for technical and non-technical measures leading to a more dynamic network control. Furthermore, the amount of energy needed for compression increases by 364% on average. T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-27 KW - Hydrogen Transport KW - Hydrogen Infrastructure KW - Network Flows KW - Mixed Integer Programming KW - Energiewende Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-79901 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai A1 - Hennings, Felix A1 - Lenz, Ralf A1 - Gotzes, Uwe A1 - Heinecke, Nina A1 - Spreckelsen, Klaus A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Optimal Operation of Transient Gas Transport Networks JF - Optimization and Engineering N2 - In this paper, we describe an algorithmic framework for the optimal operation of transient gas transport networks consisting of a hierarchical MILP formulation together with a sequential linear programming inspired post-processing routine. Its implementation is part of the KOMPASS decision support system, which is currently used in an industrial setting. Real-world gas transport networks are controlled by operating complex pipeline intersection areas, which comprise multiple compressor units, regulators, and valves. In the following, we introduce the concept of network stations to model them. Thereby, we represent the technical capabilities of a station by hand-tailored artificial arcs and add them to network. Furthermore, we choose from a predefined set of flow directions for each network station and time step, which determines where the gas enters and leaves the station. Additionally, we have to select a supported simple state, which consists of two subsets of artificial arcs: Arcs that must and arcs that cannot be used. The goal is to determine a stable control of the network satisfying all supplies and demands. The pipeline intersections, that are represented by the network stations, were initially built centuries ago. Subsequently, due to updates, changes, and extensions, they evolved into highly complex and involved topologies. To extract their basic properties and to model them using computer-readable and optimizable descriptions took several years of effort. To support the dispatchers in controlling the network, we need to compute a continuously updated list of recommended measures. Our motivation for the model presented here is to make fast decisions on important transient global control parameters, i.e., how to route the flow and where to compress the gas. Detailed continuous and discrete technical control measures realizing them, which take all hardware details into account, are determined in a subsequent step. In this paper, we present computational results from the KOMPASS project using detailed real-world data. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11081-020-09584-x VL - 22 SP - 735 EP - 781 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Griewank, Andreas A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Tischendorf, Caren T1 - On the abs-polynomial expansion of piecewise smooth functions JF - Optimization Methods and Software N2 - Tom Streubel has observed that for functions in abs-normal form, generalized Taylor expansions of arbitrary order $\bar d-1$ can be generated by algorithmic piecewise differentiation. Abs-normal form means that the real or vector valued function is defined by an evaluation procedure that involves the absolute value function $|...|$ apart from arithmetic operations and $\bar d$ times continuously differentiable univariate intrinsic functions. The additive terms in Streubel's expansion are abs-polynomial, i.e. involve neither divisions nor intrinsics. When and where no absolute values occur, Moore's recurrences can be used to propagate univariate Taylor polynomials through the evaluation procedure with a computational effort of $\mathcal O({\bar d}^2)$, provided all univariate intrinsics are defined as solutions of linear ODEs. This regularity assumption holds for all standard intrinsics, but for irregular elementaries one has to resort to Faa di Bruno's formula, which has exponential complexity in $\bar d$. As already conjectured we show that the Moore recurrences can be adapted for regular intrinsics to the abs-normal case. Finally, we observe that where the intrinsics are real analytic the expansions can be extended to infinite series that converge absolutely on spherical domains. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10556788.2020.1817448 PB - Taylor & Francis ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai A1 - Mexi, Gioni A1 - Burdakov, Oleg A1 - Casselgren, Carl Johan A1 - Koch, Thorsten ED - Hebrard, Emmanuel ED - Musliu, Nysret T1 - Minimum Cycle Partition with Length Requirements T2 - Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research N2 - In this article we introduce a Minimum Cycle Partition Problem with Length Requirements (CPLR). This generalization of the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) originates from routing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Apart from nonnegative edge weights, CPLR has an individual critical weight value associated with each vertex. A cycle partition, i.e., a vertex disjoint cycle cover, is regarded as a feasible solution if the length of each cycle, which is the sum of the weights of its edges, is not greater than the critical weight of each of its vertices. The goal is to find a feasible partition, which minimizes the number of cycles. In this article, a heuristic algorithm is presented together with a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) formulation of CPLR. We furthermore introduce a conflict graph, whose cliques yield valid constraints for the MIP model. Finally, we report on computational experiments conducted on TSPLIB-based test instances. Y1 - 2020 SN - 978-3-030-58941-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58942-4_18 VL - 12296 SP - 273 EP - 282 PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Prause, Felix A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai A1 - Defourny, Boris A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - The maximum diversity assortment selection problem JF - Mathematical Methods of Operations Research N2 - In this article, we introduce the Maximum Diversity Assortment Selection Problem (MDASP), which is a generalization of the two-dimensional Knapsack Problem (2D-KP). Given a set of rectangles and a rectangular container, the goal of 2D-KP is to determine a subset of rectangles that can be placed in the container without overlapping, i.e., a feasible assortment, such that a maximum area is covered. MDASP is to determine a set of feasible assortments, each of them covering a certain minimum threshold of the container, such that the diversity among them is maximized. Thereby, diversity is defined as the minimum or average normalized Hamming distance of all assortment pairs. MDASP was the topic of the 11th AIMMS-MOPTA Competition in 2019. The methods described in this article and the resulting computational results won the contest. In the following, we give a definition of the problem, introduce a mathematical model and solution approaches, determine upper bounds on the diversity, and conclude with computational experiments conducted on test instances derived from the 2D-KP literature. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s00186-021-00740-2 VL - 93 SP - 521 EP - 554 PB - Mathematical Methods of Operations Research ER - TY - GEN A1 - Yueksel-Erguen, Inci A1 - Zittel, Janina A1 - Wang, Ying A1 - Hennings, Felix A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Lessons learned from gas network data preprocessing N2 - The German high-pressure natural gas transport network consists of thousands of interconnected elements spread over more than 120,000 km of pipelines built during the last 100 years. During the last decade, we have spent many person-years to extract consistent data out of the available sources, both public and private. Based on two case studies, we present some of the challenges we encountered. Preparing consistent, high-quality data is surprisingly hard, and the effort necessary can hardly be overestimated. Thus, it is particularly important to decide which strategy regarding data curation to adopt. Which precision of the data is necessary? When is it more efficient to work with data that is just sufficiently correct on average? In the case studies we describe our experiences and the strategies we adopted to deal with the obstacles and to minimize future effort. Finally, we would like to emphasize that well-compiled data sets, publicly available for research purposes, provide the grounds for building innovative algorithmic solutions to the challenges of the future. T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-13 Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-78262 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Griewank, Andreas A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Tischendorf, Caren T1 - On the abs-polynomial expansion of piecewise smooth functions N2 - Tom Streubel has observed that for functions in abs-normal form, generalized Taylor expansions of arbitrary order $\bar d-1$ can be generated by algorithmic piecewise differentiation. Abs-normal form means that the real or vector valued function is defined by an evaluation procedure that involves the absolute value function $|...|$ apart from arithmetic operations and $\bar d$ times continuously differentiable univariate intrinsic functions. The additive terms in Streubel's expansion are abs-polynomial, i.e. involve neither divisions nor intrinsics. When and where no absolute values occur, Moore's recurrences can be used to propagate univariate Taylor polynomials through the evaluation procedure with a computational effort of $\mathcal O({\bar d}^2)$, provided all univariate intrinsics are defined as solutions of linear ODEs. This regularity assumption holds for all standard intrinsics, but for irregular elementaries one has to resort to Faa di Bruno's formula, which has exponential complexity in $\bar d$. As already conjectured we show that the Moore recurrences can be adapted for regular intrinsics to the abs-normal case. Finally, we observe that where the intrinsics are real analytic the expansions can be extended to infinite series that converge absolutely on spherical domains. T3 - ZIB-Report - 20-14 KW - Nonsmooth Taylor polynomial/series KW - forward mode propagation KW - abs-normal form KW - abs-linear form KW - absolute convergence KW - Moore recurrences KW - quadratic complexity Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-78448 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Becker, Kai-Helge A1 - Hiller, Benjamin T1 - Improved optimization models for potential-driven network flow problems via ASTS orientations N2 - The class of potential-driven network flow problems provides important models for a range of infrastructure networks that lead to hard-to-solve MINLPs in real-world applications. On large-scale meshed networks the relaxations usually employed are rather weak due to cycles in the network. To address this situation, we introduce the concept of ASTS orientations, a generalization of bipolar orientations, as a combinatorial relaxation of feasible solutions of potential-driven flow problems, study their structure, and show how they can be used to strengthen existing relaxations and thus provide improved optimization models. Our computational results indicate that ASTS orientations can be used to derive much stronger bounds on the flow variables than existing bound tightening methods and to yield significant performance improvements for an existing state-of-the-art MILP model for large-scale gas networks. T3 - ZIB-Report - 19-58 KW - potential-driven network flows KW - mixed-integer nonlinear programming KW - ASTS orientations KW - bipolar orientations Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-75347 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - THES A1 - Mexi, Gioni T1 - Node Partitioning and Subtours Creation Problem (NPSC) Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-77094 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Benner, Peter A1 - Grundel, Sara A1 - Himpe, Christian A1 - Huck, Christoph A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Tischendorf, Caren T1 - Gas Network Benchmark Models T2 - Applications of Differential-Algebraic Equations: Examples and Benchmarks N2 - The simulation of gas transportation networks becomes increasingly more important as its use-cases broaden to more complex applications. Classically, the purpose of the gas network was the transportation of predominantly natural gas from a supplier to the consumer for long-term scheduled volumes. With the rise of renewable energy sources, gas-fired power plants are often chosen to compensate for the fluctuating nature of the renewables, due to their on-demand power generation capability. Such an only short-term plannable supply and demand setting requires sophisticated simulations of the gas network prior to the dispatch to ensure the supply of all customers for a range of possible scenarios and to prevent damages to the gas network. In this work we describe the modeling of gas networks and present benchmark systems to test implementations and compare new or extended models. Y1 - 2019 SN - 978-3-030-03718-5 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/11221_2018_5 SP - 171 EP - 197 PB - Springer International Publishing ER - TY - GEN A1 - Gamrath, Gerald A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Martin, Alexander A1 - Miltenberger, Matthias A1 - Weninger, Dieter T1 - Progress in Presolving for Mixed Integer Programming N2 - Presolving attempts to eliminate redundant information from the problem formulation and simultaneously tries to strengthen the formulation. It can be very effective and is often essential for solving instances. Especially for mixed integer programming problems, fast and effective presolving algorithms are very important. In this paper, we report on three new presolving techniques. The first method searches for singleton continuous columns and tries to fix the corresponding variables. Then we present a presolving technique which exploits a partial order of the variables to induce fixings. Finally, we show an approach based on connected components in graphs. Our computational results confirm the profitable use of the algorithms in practice. T3 - ZIB-Report - 13-48 KW - mixed-integer programming KW - presolving KW - preprocessing Y1 - 2013 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-42530 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoppmann-Baum, Kai A1 - Burdakov, Oleg A1 - Mexi, Gioni A1 - Casselgren, Carl Johan A1 - Koch, Thorsten T1 - Length-Constrained Cycle Partition with an Application to UAV Routing JF - Optimization Methods and Software N2 - This article discusses the Length-Constrained Cycle Partition Problem (LCCP), which constitutes a new generalization of the Travelling Salesperson Problem (TSP). Apart from nonnegative edge weights, the undirected graph in LCCP features a nonnegative critical length parameter for each vertex. A cycle partition, i.e., a vertex-disjoint cycle cover, is a feasible solution for LCCP if the length of each cycle is not greater than the critical length of each vertex contained in it. The goal is to find a feasible partition having a minimum number of cycles. Besides analyzing theoretical properties and developing preprocessing techniques, we propose an elaborate heuristic algorithm that produces solutions of good quality even for large-size instances. Moreover, we present two exact mixed-integer programming formulations (MIPs) for LCCP, which are inspired by well-known modeling approaches for TSP. Further, we introduce the concept of conflict hypergraphs, whose cliques yield valid constraints for the MIP models. We conclude with a discussion on computational experiments that we conducted using (A)TSPLIB-based problem instances. As a motivating example application, we describe a routing problem where a fleet of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) must patrol a given set of areas. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10556788.2022.2053972 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dell’Amico, M. A1 - Hadjidimitriou, Natalia Selini A1 - Koch, Thorsten A1 - Petkovic, Milena T1 - Forecasting Natural Gas Flows in Large Networks JF - Machine Learning, Optimization, and Big Data. MOD 2017. N2 - Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel since it emits the lowest amount of other remains after being burned. Over the years, natural gas usage has increased significantly. Accurate forecasting is crucial for maintaining gas supplies, transportation and network stability. This paper presents two methodologies to identify the optimal configuration o parameters of a Neural Network (NN) to forecast the next 24 h of gas flow for each node of a large gas network. In particular the first one applies a Design Of Experiments (DOE) to obtain a quick initial solution. An orthogonal design, consisting of 18 experiments selected among a total of 4.374 combinations of seven parameters (training algorithm, transfer function, regularization, learning rate, lags, and epochs), is used. The best result is selected as initial solution of an extended experiment for which the Simulated Annealing is run to find the optimal design among 89.100 possible combinations of parameters. The second technique is based on the application of Genetic Algorithm for the selection of the optimal parameters of a recurrent neural network for time series forecast. GA was applied with binary representation of potential solutions, where subsets of bits in the bit string represent different values for several parameters of the recurrent neural network. We tested these methods on three municipal nodes, using one year and half of hourly gas flow to train the network and 60 days for testing. Our results clearly show that the presented methodologies bring promising results in terms of optimal configuration of parameters and forecast error. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72926-8_14 VL - Lecture Notes in Computer Science IS - vol 10710 SP - 158 EP - 171 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Anderson, Lovis A1 - Hiller, Benjamin T1 - A Sweep-Plane Algorithm for the Computation of the Volume of a Union of Polytopes T2 - Operations Research Proceedings 2018 N2 - Optimization models often feature disjunctions of polytopes as submodels. Such a disjunctive set is initially at best) relaxed to its convex hull, which is then refined by branching. To measure the error of the convex relaxation, the (relative) difference between the volume of the convex hull and the volume of the disjunctive set may be used. This requires a method to compute the volume of the disjunctive set. We propose a revised variant of an old algorithm by Bieri and Nef (1983) for this purpose. The algorithm uses a sweep-plane to incrementally calculate the volume of the disjunctive set as a function of the offset parameter of the sweep-plane. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18500-8_12 VL - Operations Research Proceedings ER - TY - GEN A1 - Hasenfelder, Richard A1 - Lehmann, Lutz A1 - Radons, Manuel A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Strohm, Christian A1 - Griewank, Andreas T1 - Computational aspects of the Generalized Trapezoidal Rule N2 - In this article we analyze a generalized trapezoidal rule for initial value problems with piecewise smooth right hand side F:IR^n -> IR^n. When applied to such a problem, the classical trapezoidal rule suffers from a loss of accuracy if the solution trajectory intersects a non-differentiability of F. In such a situation the investigated generalized trapezoidal rule achieves a higher convergence order than the classical method. While the asymptotic behavior of the generalized method was investigated in a previous work, in the present article we develop the algorithmic structure for efficient implementation strategies and estimate the actual computational cost of the latter. Moreover, energy preservation of the generalized trapezoidal rule is proved for Hamiltonian systems with piecewise linear right hand side. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-23 KW - Algorithmic Differentiation KW - Automatic Differentiation KW - Lipschitz Continuity KW - Piecewise Linearization KW - Nonsmooth KW - Trapezoidal Rule KW - Implementation KW - Computational Cost Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-68615 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Tischendorf, Caren A1 - Griewank, Andreas T1 - Piecewise Polynomial Taylor Expansions – The Generalization of Faà di Bruno’s Formula N2 - We present an extension of Taylor’s theorem towards nonsmooth evalua- tion procedures incorporating absolute value operaions. Evaluations procedures are computer programs of mathematical functions in closed form expression and al- low a different treatment of smooth operations and calls to the absolute value value function. The well known classical Theorem of Taylor defines polynomial approx- imation of sufficiently smooth functions and is widely used for the derivation and analysis of numerical integrators for systems of ordinary differential or differential algebraic equations, for the construction of solvers for the continuous nonlinear op- timization of finite dimensional objective functions and for root solving of nonlinear systems of equations. The herein provided proof is construtive and allow efficiently designed algorithms for the execution and computation of generalized piecewise polynomial expansions. As a demonstration we will derive a k-step method on the basis of polynomial interpolation and the proposed generalized expansions. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-24 KW - generalized Taylor expansion KW - implicit generation of splines KW - nonsmooth integration of differential algebraic equations (DAE and ODE) KW - multistep methods KW - generalized hermite interpolation KW - algorithmic piecewise differentiation (AD and APD) KW - evaluation procedures KW - treating absolute values (abs, max and min) Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-68859 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Lenz, Ralf A1 - Becker, Kai-Helge T1 - Optimization of Capacity Expansion in Potential-driven Networks including Multiple Looping - A comparison of modelling approaches N2 - In commodity transport networks such as natural gas, hydrogen and water networks, flows arise from nonlinear potential differences between the nodes, which can be represented by so-called "potential-driven" network models. When operators of these networks face increasing demand or the need to handle more diverse transport situations, they regularly seek to expand the capacity of their network by building new pipelines parallel to existing ones ("looping"). The paper introduces a new mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) model and a new non-linear programming (NLP) model and compares these with existing models for the looping problem and related problems in the literature, both theoretically and experimentally. On this basis, we give recommendations about the circumstances under which a certain model should be used. In particular, it turns out that one of our novel models outperforms the existing models. Moreover, the paper is the first to include the practically relevant option that a particular pipeline may be looped several times. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-44 KW - OR in energy KW - Network expansion KW - MINLP Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-69726 SN - 1438-0064 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Radons, Manuel A1 - Lehmann, Lutz A1 - Streubel, Tom A1 - Griewank, Andreas T1 - An Open Newton Method for Piecewise Smooth Systems N2 - Recent research has shown that piecewise smooth (PS) functions can be approximated by piecewise linear functions with second order error in the distance to a given reference point. A semismooth Newton type algorithm based on successive application of these piecewise linearizations was subsequently developed for the solution of PS equation systems. For local bijectivity of the linearization at a root, a radius of quadratic convergence was explicitly calculated in terms of local Lipschitz constants of the underlying PS function. In the present work we relax the criterium of local bijectivity of the linearization to local openness. For this purpose a weak implicit function theorem is proved via local mapping degree theory. It is shown that there exist PS functions f:IR^2 --> IR^2 satisfying the weaker criterium where every neighborhood of the root of f contains a point x such that all elements of the Clarke Jacobian at x are singular. In such neighborhoods the steps of classical semismooth Newton are not defined, which establishes the new method as an independent algorithm. To further clarify the relation between a PS function and its piecewise linearization, several statements about structure correspondences between the two are proved. Moreover, the influence of the specific representation of the local piecewise linear models on the robustness of our method is studied. An example application from cardiovascular mathematics is given. T3 - ZIB-Report - 18-43 Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-70418 SN - 1438-0064 ER -