On the convergence of local solutions for the method quADAPT

A classical solution approach to semi-infinite programming, which is easy to implement, is based on discretizing the semi-infinite index set. The Blankenship and Falk algorithm adaptively chooses a small discretization. On every iteration, a solution based on the current discretization is calculated. In a second step, the most violated constraint is determined and added to the discretization. In a previous work, the authors showed that the algorithm has a slow convergence and introduced a new method that exhibits a quadratic rate [Seidel and Küfer, An adaptive discretization method solving semi-infinite optimization problems with quadratic rate of convergence. Optimization. 2022;71(8):2211-2239]. In this paper, we further investigate the introduced method. The method implements new constraints that can cut off parts of the feasible set. We will study the effect on local minima. We assume that in each iteration local solutions to the discretized problems are computed. We will give an example showing that in general a limit point is not necessarily a local solution of the original semi-infinite problem, but only of an approximate problem. We then study second-order conditions and show that they coincide for both problems. We use this to develop conditions under which local solutions converge to a local solution in the limit. Finally, we present quadratic convergence results for the case of local solutions.