In this course the students learn basic knowledge and the individual application of optimization problems. The theory is applied to technical systems, for example from the field of energy technology and mechanical engineering. The students can bring and work on their own examples of optimization problems from their respective subject areas.

In the exercise for the fifth credit point, the students learn how to model a technical problem as an optimization problem. The students learn how to implement the problem in a programming language of choice. The application of solvers for optimizing the problem effectively is practiced. For optimizing hard solvable optimization problems, the learned knowledge from the lecture is used to reformulate the problem into an easier to solve problem class.

The focus is on application-related knowledge and application-related competences. The acquired knowledge and competences are to be further developed independently within master's theses in the participating subject areas.

After successful completion of this course:

• you are able to formulate technical problems as optimization problems
• you are able to assign the resulting optimization problems to a problem class and to derive considerations for its solvability from it
• you are able to reformulate optimization problems so that they belong to a different class
• you know selected methods for the solution of optimization problems and you are familiar with the respective mathematical backgrounds
• you know to which problem classes the respective procedures are to be applied and which advantages/disadvantages result from it
• you are able to effectively use commercial and non-commercial solvers to solve optimization problems