Finding all global optima of engineering design problems with discrete signomial terms.

Many engineering design problems are frequently modelled as nonlinear programming problems with discrete signomial terms. In general, signomial programs are very difficult to solve for obtaining the globally optimal solution. This study reformulates the engineering design problem with discrete signomial terms as a mixed-integer linear program and finds all alternative global optima. Compared with existing exact methods, the proposed method uses fewer variables and constraints in the reformulated model and therefore efficiently solves the engineering problem to derive all global optima. Illustrative examples from the literature are solved to demonstrate the usefulness and efficiency of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]