Simulation and Optimization

This book contains papers which were presented at an IMA conference held at the University of Reading in September 1986. The papers concern theoretical problems of simulation and optimization of large-scale systems as well as their practical implementation in many areas such as gas networks, power systems, telecommunication networks, chemical plants, the aerospace industry and meterology. Mathematical models describing large systems contain many hundreds, sometimes thousands, of equations and the solution of these equations is very demanding in computer resources. In practice the aim is to find methods of solution which can be computed at realistic cost. This is the reason why many specialized techniques have been developed, taking into account special properties of particular large systems. This collection may be of interest to engineers and numerical analysts whose work involves large-scale systems, since it provides an up-to-date survey of the subject.Table of ContentSome applications giving rise to large-scale systems; the evolution of a design methodology for large simulation models using PMSP; software tools for time-dependent differential equations; multigrids applied to a solution technique for recirculating fluid flow problems; conjugate-gradient-type methods and multigrid techniques for general-purpose solution packages; a view of nonlinear optimization in a large number of variables; finite element optimization - the use of structured automatic differentiation; a hybrid algorithm for linear programming; using Fortran 8x to solve large problems; optimization techniques for large networks - gas and water; steady-state optimization of large gas transmission systems; methods for gas network simulation; the short term scheduling of a hydro-thermal electricity generating system; sparse nonlinear systems in chemical process simulation; large scale telecommunication network optimization; optimization in computer aided structural design; a high-pass filter for optimum calibration of observing systems with applications; the provision of high performance computing.