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This article is dedicated to a comparison analysis of optimization methods, in order to perform an interval estimation of electrical energy technical losses in distribution networks of voltage 6–20 kV. The issue of interval evaluation is represented as a multi-dimensional conditional minimization/maximization problem with implicit target function. A number of numerical optimization methods of first and zero orders is observed, with the aim of determining the most suitable for the problem of interest. The desired algorithm is BOBYQA, in which the target function is replaced with its quadratic approximation in some trusted region.

The traditional approach to computing optimal game strategies of firms on oligopolistic markets and of indicators of such markets consists in studying linear dynamical games with quadratic criteria and solving generalized matrix Riccati equations.

The other approach proposed by the author is based on methods of operational calculus (in particular, Z-transform). This approach makes it possible to achieve economic meaningful decisions under wider field of parameter values. It characterizes by simplicity of computations and by necessary for economic analysis visibility. One of its advantages is that in many cases important for economic practice, it, in contrast to the traditional approach, provides the ability to make calculations using widespread spreadsheets, which allows to study the prospects for the development of oligopolistic markets to a wide range of professionals and consumers.

The article deals with the practical aspects of determining the optimal Nash–Cournot strategies of participants in oligopolistic markets on the basis of operational calculus, in particular the technique of computing the optimal Nash–Cournot strategies in Excel. As an illustration of the opportinities of the proposed methods of calculation, examples close to the practical problems of forecasting indicators of the markets of high-tech products are studied.

The results of calculations obtained by the author for numerous examples and real economic systems, both using the obtained relations on the basis of spreadsheets and using extended Riccati equations, are very close. In most of the considered practical problems, the deviation of the indicators calculated in accordance with the two approaches, as a rule, does not exceed 1.5–2%. The highest value of relative deviations (up to 3–5%) is observed at the beginning of the forecasting period. In typical cases, the period of relatively noticeable deviations is 3–5 moments of time. After the transition period, there is almost complete agreement of the values of the required indicators using both approaches.

Problems of multiple covering ($k$-covering) of a bounded set $G$ with equal circles of a given radius are well known. They are thoroughly studied under the assumption that $G$ is a finite set. There are several papers concerned with studying this problem in the case where $G$ is a connected set. In this paper, we study the problem of minimizing the number of circles that form a $k$-covering, $k \geqslant 1$, provided that $G$ is a bounded convex plane domain.

For the above-mentioned problem, we state a 0-1 linear model, a general integer linear model, and a nonlinear model, imposing a constraint on the minimum distance between the centers of covering circles. The latter constraint is due to the fact that in practice one can place at most one device at each point. We establish necessary and sufficient solvability conditions for the linear models and describe one (easily realizable) variant of these conditions in the case where the covered set $G$ is a rectangle.

We propose some methods for finding an approximate number of circles of a given radius that provide the desired $k$-covering of the set $G$, both with and without constraints on distances between the circles’ centers. We treat the calculated values as approximate upper bounds for the number of circles. We also propose a technique that allows one to get approximate lower bounds for the number of circles that is necessary for providing a $k$-covering of the set $G$. In the general linear model, as distinct from the 0-1 linear model, we require no additional constraint. The difference between the upper and lower bounds for the number of circles characterizes the quality (acceptability) of the constructed $k$-covering.

We state a nonlinear mathematical model for the $k$-covering problem with the above-mentioned constraints imposed on distances between the centers of covering circles. For this model, we propose an algorithm which (in certain cases) allows one to find more exact solutions to covering problems than those calculated from linear models.

For implementing the proposed approach, we have developed computer programs and performed numerical experiments. Results of numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

Optimization of antitumor radiotherapy represents an urgent issue, as approximately half of the patients diagnosed with cancer undergo radiotherapy during their treatment. Proton therapy is potentially more efficient than traditional X-ray radiotherapy due to fundamental differences in physics of dose deposition, leading to better targeting of tumors and less collateral damage to healthy tissue. There is increasing interest in the use of non-radioactive radiosensitizing tumor-specific nanoparticles the use of which can boost the performance of proton therapy. Such nanoparticles are small volumes of a sensitizer, such as boron-10 or various metal oxides, enclosed in a polymer layer containing tumor-specific antibodies, which allows for their targeted delivery to malignant cells. Furthermore, a combination of proton therapy with antiangiogenic therapy that normalizes tumor-associated microvasculature may yield further synergistic increase in overall treatment efficacy.

We have developed a spatially distributed mathematical model simulating the growth of a non-invasive tumor undergoing treatment by fractionated proton therapy with nanosensitizers and antiangiogenic therapy. The modeling results suggest that the most effective way to combine these treatment modalities should strongly depend on the tumor cells’ proliferation rate and their intrinsic radiosensitivity. Namely, a combination of antiangiogenic therapy with proton therapy, regardless of whether radiosensitizing nanoparticles are used, benefits treatment efficacy of rapidly growing tumors as well as radioresistant tumors with moderate growth rate. In these cases, administration of proton therapy simultaneously with antiangiogenic drugs after the initial single injection of nanosensitizers is the most effective option among those analyzed. Conversely, for slowly growing tumors, maximization of the number of nanosensitizer injections without antiangiogenic therapy proves to be a more efficient option, with enhancement in treatment efficacy growing with the increase of tumor radiosensitivity. However, the results also show that the overall efficacy of proton therapy is likely to increase only modestly with the addition of nanosensitizers and antiangiogenic drugs.

The Lipschitz continuous property has been used for a long time to solve the global optimization problem and continues to be used. Here we can mention the work of Piyavskii, Yevtushenko, Strongin, Shubert, Sergeyev, Kvasov and others. Most papers assume a priori knowledge of the Lipschitz constant, but the derivation of this constant is a separate problem. Further still, we must prove that an objective function is really Lipschitz, and it is a complicated problem too. In the case where the Lipschitz continuity is established, Strongin proposed an algorithm for global optimization of a satisfying Lipschitz condition on a compact interval function without any a priori knowledge of the Lipschitz estimate. The algorithm not only finds a global extremum, but it determines the Lipschitz estimate too. It is known that every function that satisfies the Lipchitz condition on a compact convex set is uniformly continuous, but the reverse is not always true. However, there exist models (Arutyunova, Dulliev, Zabotin) whose study requires a minimization of the continuous but definitely not Lipschitz function. One of the algorithms for solving such a problem was proposed by R. J. Vanderbei. In his work he introduced some generalization of the Lipchitz property named $\varepsilon$-Lipchitz and proved that a function defined on a compact convex set is uniformly continuous if and only if it satisfies the $\varepsilon$-Lipchitz condition. The above-mentioned property allowed him to extend Piyavskii’s method. However, Vanderbei assumed that for a given value of $\varepsilon$ it is possible to obtain an associate Lipschitz $\varepsilon$-constant, which is a very difficult problem. Thus, there is a need to construct, for a function continuous on a compact convex domain, a global optimization algorithm which works in some way like Strongin’s algorithm, i.e., without any a priori knowledge of the Lipschitz $\varepsilon$-constant. In this paper we propose an extension of Strongin’s global optimization algorithm to a function continuous on a compact interval using the $\varepsilon$-Lipchitz conception, prove its convergence and solve some numerical examples using the software that implements the developed method.

In this paper we consider mathematical model to control water quality. We study a system with two-level hierarchy: one environmental organization (supervisor) at the top level and a few industrial enterprises (agents) at the lower level. The main goal of the supervisor is to keep water pollution level below certain value, while enterprises pollute water, as a side effect of the manufacturing process. Supervisor achieves its goal by charging a penalty for enterprises. On the other hand, enterprises choose how much to purify their wastewater to maximize their income.The fee increases the budget of the supervisor. Moreover, effulent fees are charged for the quantity and/or quality of the discharged pollution. Unfortunately, in practice, such charges are ineffective due to the insufficient tax size. The article solves the problem of determining the optimal size of the charge for pollution discharge, which allows maintaining the quality of river water in the rear range.

We describe system members goals with target functionals, and describe water pollution level and enterprises state as system of ordinary differential equations. We consider the problem from both supervisor and enterprises sides. From agents’ point a normal-form game arises, where we search for Nash equilibrium and for the supervisor, we search for Stackelberg equilibrium. We propose numerical algorithms for finding both Nash and Stackelberg equilibrium. When we construct Nash equilibrium, we solve optimal control problem using Pontryagin’s maximum principle. We construct Hamilton’s function and solve corresponding system of partial differential equations with shooting method and finite difference method. Numerical calculations show that the low penalty for enterprises results in increasing pollution level, when relatively high penalty can result in enterprises bankruptcy. This leads to the problem of choosing optimal penalty, which requires considering problem from the supervisor point. In that case we use the method of qualitatively representative scenarios for supervisor and Pontryagin’s maximum principle for agents to find optimal control for the system. At last, we compute system consistency ratio and test algorithms for different data. The results show that a hierarchical control is required to provide system stability.

The article presents the numerical modeling and study of the kinetic model of propane pyrolysis. The study of the reaction kinetics is a necessary stage in modeling the dynamics of the gas flow in the reactor.

The kinetic model of propane pyrolysis is a nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations of the first order with parameters, the role of which is played by the reaction rate constants. Math modeling of processes is based on the use of the mass conservation law. To solve an initial (forward) problem, implicit methods for solving stiff ordinary differential equation systems are used. The model contains 60 input kinetic parameters and 17 output parameters corresponding to the reaction substances, of which only 9 are observable. In the process of solving the problem of estimating parameters (inverse problem), there is a question of non-uniqueness of the set of parameters that satisfy the experimental data. Therefore, before solving the inverse problem, the possibility of determining the parameters of the model is analyzed (analysis of identifiability).

To analyze identifiability, we use the orthogonal method, which has proven itself well for analyzing models with a large number of parameters. The algorithm is based on the analysis of the sensitivity matrix by the methods of differential and linear algebra, which shows the degree of dependence of the unknown parameters of the models on the given measurements. The analysis of sensitivity and identifiability showed that the parameters of the model are stably determined from a given set of experimental data. The article presents a list of model parameters from most to least identifiable. Taking into account the analysis of the identifiability of the mathematical model, restrictions were introduced on the search for less identifiable parameters when solving the inverse problem.

The inverse problem of estimating the parameters was solved using a genetic algorithm. The article presents the found optimal values of the kinetic parameters. A comparison of the experimental and calculated dependences of the concentrations of propane, main and by-products of the reaction on temperature for different flow rates of the mixture is presented. The conclusion about the adequacy of the constructed mathematical model is made on the basis of the correspondence of the results obtained to physicochemical laws and experimental data.

The paper presents a comparative analysis of the enterprises of the Arctic Zone of the Russian Federation (AZ RF) on economic indicators in accordance with the rating of the Polar index. This study includes numerical data of 193 enterprises located in the AZ RF. Machine learning methods are applied, both standard, from open source, and own original methods — the method of Optimally Reliable Partitions (ORP), the method of Statistically Weighted Syndromes (SWS). Held split, indicating the maximum value of the functional quality, this study used the simplest family of different one-dimensional partition with a single boundary point, as well as a collection of different two-dimensional partition with one boundary point on each of the two combining variables. Permutation tests allow not only to evaluate the reliability of the data of the revealed regularities, but also to exclude partitions with excessive complexity from the set of the revealed regularities. Patterns connected the class number and economic indicators are revealed using the SDT method on one-dimensional indicators. The regularities which are revealed within the framework of the simplest one-dimensional model with one boundary point and with significance not worse than p < 0.001 are also presented in the given study. The so-called sliding control method was used for reliable evaluation of such diagnostic ability. As a result of these studies, a set of methods that had sufficient effectiveness was identified. The collective method based on the results of several machine learning methods showed the high importance of economic indicators for the division of enterprises in accordance with the rating of the Polar index. Our study proved and showed that those companies that entered the top Rating of the Polar index are generally recognized by financial indicators among all companies in the Arctic Zone. However it would be useful to supplement the list of indicators with ecological and social criteria.

This work deals with numerical modeling of motion of the multibody systems consisting of rigid bodies with arbitrary masses and inertial properties. We consider both planar and spatial systems which may contain kinematic loops.

The numerical modeling is fully automatic and its computational algorithm contains three principal steps. On step one a graph of the considered mechanical system is formed from the userinput data. This graph represents the hierarchical structure of the mechanical system. On step two the differential-algebraic equations of motion of the system are derived using the so-called Joint Coordinate Method. This method allows to minimize the redundancy and lower the number of the equations of motion and thus optimize the calculations. On step three the equations of motion are integrated numerically and the resulting laws of motion are presented via user interface or files.

The aforementioned algorithm is implemented in the software complex that contains a computer algebra system, a graph library, a mechanical solver, a library of numerical methods and a user interface.

The article is devoted to studying the application of convex optimization methods to solve the Cauchy problem for the Helmholtz equation, which is ill-posed since the equation belongs to the elliptic type. The Cauchy problem is formulated as an inverse problem and is reduced to a convex optimization problem in a Hilbert space. The functional to be optimized and its gradient are calculated using the solution of boundary value problems, which, in turn, are well-posed and can be approximately solved by standard numerical methods, such as finite-difference schemes and Fourier series expansions. The convergence of the applied fast gradient method and the quality of the solution obtained in this way are experimentally investigated. The experiment shows that the accelerated gradient method — the Similar Triangle Method — converges faster than the non-accelerated method. Theorems on the computational complexity of the resulting algorithms are formulated and proved. It is found that Fourier’s series expansions are better than finite-difference schemes in terms of the speed of calculations and improve the quality of the solution obtained. An attempt was made to use restarts of the Similar Triangle Method after halving the residual of the functional. In this case, the convergence does not improve, which confirms the absence of strong convexity. The experiments show that the inaccuracy of the calculations is more adequately described by the additive concept of the noise in the first-order oracle. This factor limits the achievable quality of the solution, but the error does not accumulate. According to the results obtained, the use of accelerated gradient optimization methods can be the way to solve inverse problems effectively.