Disjunctive linearization technique for solving problems with bilinear terms

MARÍA ANALIA RODRIGUEZ; ALDO R. VECCHIETTI

Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, 28

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Año: 2010; p. 1521 - 1526

Many applications involve bilinear relations in their formulations which make the problem non-linear non-convex. Then, it is necessary to redefine the model in order to guarantee a global solution. In this sense, this work presents two disjunctive reformulations in order to construct linear representations of bilinear terms where at least one variable is integer. Three problems are solved: the trim-loss in the production of paper rolls, the cutting stock in the board boxes industry, and the inventory and delivery problem. Due to the combinatorial nature of the problems finding an efficient reformulation is a challenging task. The proposed methods are compared with other approaches.