An Interior Trust Region Approach for Nonlinear Minimization Subject to Bounds

Abstract

We propose a new trust region approach for minimizing a nonlinear function subject to simple bounds. By choosing an appropriate quadratic model and scaling matrix at each iteration, we show that it is not necessary to solve a quadratic programming subproblem, with linear inequalities, to obtain an improved step using the trust region idea. Instead, a solution to a trust region subproblem is defined by minimizing a quadratic function subject only to an ellipsoidal constraint. The iterates generated by these methods are always strictly feasible. Our proposed methods reduce to a standard trust region approach for the unconstrained problem when there are no upper or lower bounds on the variables. Global and quadratic convergence of the methods is established; preliminary numerical experiments are reported.