Constructing a compound constraint

Solving problems of the form

minimize

subject to

requires a means to define a mixed constraint set. To simplify the use of mixed constraint sets in OPT++, we created a CompoundConstraint class. A CompoundConstraint is an array of heterogenous constraints.

The first CompoundConstraint constructor takes as a parameter a single constraint. For example,

   CompoundConstraint(const Constraint& c1); 

The second constructor

   CompoundConstraint(const Constraint& c1, const Constraint& c2); 

two constraints as parameters.

If you have more than two constraints, then you must use either the copy constructor

   CompoundConstraint(const CompoundConstraint& cc);

or pass an OptppArray<Constraint> pointer to the following constructor. For example,

   CompoundConstraint(const OptppArray<Constraint>& constraints); 

Now, let's create the following constraint set:

In the source file below, we present two ways to construct a compound constraint. We use the second and fourth constructors.

   bool bdFlag;
   int n         = 5;
   int numOfCons = 5;
   int ncnln     = 3;
   ColumnVector bound(numOfCons), b(ncnln);

   //  Initialize the upper bounds
   bound  << 1.0 << 2.0 << 3.0
          << 4.0 << 5.0;
   bdFlag = false;
   Constraint bc = new BoundConstraint(numOfCons, bound, bdFlag); 

   //  Create a pointer to an NLP object 
   //  Functions nleqn and init_nleqn are defined elsewhere
   NLP* nlprob  = new NLP( new NLF1(n, ncnln, nleqn, init_nleqn) );

   //  Initialize the right-hand side of the equations 
   b << 1.0 << 2.0 << 3.0;

   //  Create a set of nonlinear equations 
   Constraint nleqns = new NonLinearEquation(nlprob, b, ncnln);

   //  Create a compound constraint which contains 
   //  ONLY the bound constraints and nonlinear equations
   CompoundConstraint constraint_set1(bc, nleqns);

   Matrix A(n,n);
   Real a[] = {11, 12, ........., 55};

   // Store elements of the matrix A
   A       << a;

   //  Create a set of linear inequalities 
   Constraint lineqs = new LinearInequality(A, bound); 
   
   //   Create an array of constraints
   OptppArray<Constraint> constraintArray(0);
   constraintArray.append(bc);
   constraintArray.append(nleqns);
   constraintArray.append(lineqs);

   // Create another compound constraint  
   CompoundConstraint constraint_set2(constraintArray);

Note: Inside the constructor, the constraints are sorted so that equality constraints are followed by inequality constraints. Why? Optimization algorithms may treat inequality constraints different from equality constraints. If the constraints are pre-sorted, the optimization algorithm does not have to continually query the compound constraint about the constraint type of each constraint.

Next Section: Parallel Optimization | Back to Constrained minimization

Last revised June 30, 2006

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