Global optimization for signomial discrete programming problems in engineering design

Signomial discrete programming (SDP) problems arise frequently in a variety of real applications. Although many optimization techniques have been developed to solve an SDP problem, they use too many binary variables to reformulate the problem for finding a globally optimal solution or can only derive a local or an approximate solution. This article proposes a global optimization method to solve an SDP problem by integrating an efficient linear expression of single variable discrete functions and convexification techniques. An SDP problem can be converted into a convex mixed-integer programming problem solvable to obtain a global optimum. Several illustrative examples are also presented to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed method.