Dynamic optimization of industrial processes with nonuniform discretization-based control vector parameterization

This paper proposes a novel scheme of nonuniform discretizetion-based control vector parameterization (ndCVP, for short) for dynamic optimization problems (DOPs) of industrial processes. In our ndCVP scheme, the time span is partitioned into a multitude of uneven intervals, and incremental time parameters are encoded, along with the control parameters, into the individual to be optimized. Our coding method can avoid handling complex ordinal constraints. It is proved that ndCVP is a natural generalization of uniform discretization-based control vector parameterization (udCVP). By integrating ndCVP into hybrid gradient particle swarm optimization (HGPSO), a new optimization method, named ndCVP-HGPSO for short, is formed. By application in four classic DOPs, simulation results show that ndCVP-HGPSO is able to achieve similar or even better performances with a small number of control intervals; while the computational overheads are acceptable. Furthermore, ndCVP and udCVP are compared in terms of two situations: given the same number of control intervals and given the same number of optimization variables. The results show that ndCVP can achieve better performance in most cases.