Approximate solutions of continuous dispersion problems

The problem of positioning p points so as to maximize the minimum distance between them has been studied in both location theory (as the continuous p-dispersion problem) and the design of computer experiments (as the maximin distance problem). This problem can be formulated as a nonlinear program, either exactly or approximately. We consider formulations of both types and demonstrate that, as p increases, it becomes dramatically more expensive to compute solutions of the exact formulation than to compute solutions of the approximate formulation.