A smoothing scheme for a minimum weight problem in structural plasticity

We revisit an improtant and challenging class of minimum weight structural plasticity problems, the feature of which is the presence of complementarity constraints. Such relations mathematically express the perpendicularity of two sign-constrained vectors and mechanically describe an inherent property of plasticity. The optimization problem in point is referred to in the mathematical programming literature as a Mathematical Program with Equilibrium Constraints (MPEC). Due to its intrinsic complexity, MPECs are computationally very hard to solve. In this paper, we adopt recent ideas, proposed by mathematical programmers, on smoothing to develop a simple scheme for reformulating and solving our minimum weight problem as a standard nonlinear program. Simple examples concerning truss-like structures are also presented for illustrative purposes.