OPTIMIZATION OF MECHANICAL SYSTEMS: ON NON-LINEAR FIRST-ORDER APPROXIMATION WITH AN ADDITIVE CONVEX TERM.

This paper presents an improved approximation technique for gradient based approximation methods of mathematical programming. The proposed technique prevents oscillations of the sequence of approximate solutions in the optimization process efficiently and preserves the relatively simple form of the approximating functions. The improvement is achieved by adding an appropriate convex term to each conventional approximating function. The theory is illustrated with several numerical examples. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]