A primal‐dual augmented Lagrangian

Nonlinearly constrained optimization problems can be solved by minimizing a sequence of simpler unconstrained or linearly constrained subproblems. In this paper, we consider the formulation of subproblems in which the objective function is a generalization of the Hestenes‐Powell augmented Lagrangian function. The main feature of the generalized function is that it is minimized with respect to both the primal and the dual variables simultaneously. The benefits of this approach include: (i) the ability to control the quality of the dual variables during the solution of the subproblem; (ii) the availability of improved dual estimates on early termination of the subproblem; and (iii) the ability to regularize the subproblem by imposing explicit bounds on the dual variables. We propose two primal‐dual variants of conventional primal methods: a primal‐dual bound constrained Lagrangian (pdBCL) method and a primal‐dual 𝓁 1 linearly constrained Lagrangian (pd𝓁 1LCL) method. Finally, a new sequential quadratic programming (pdSQP) method is proposed that uses the primal‐dual augmented Lagrangian as a merit function.