Globalization of nonsmooth Newton methods for optimal control problems

Abstract

We present a new approach for the globalization of the primal-dual active set or equivalently the nonsmooth Newton method applied to an optimal control problem. The basic result is the equivalence of this method to a nonsmooth Newton method applied to the nonlinear Schur complement of the optimality system. Our approach does not require the construction of an additional merit function or additional descent direction. The nonsmooth Newton directions are naturally appropriate descent directions for a smooth dual energy and guarantee global convergence if standard damping methods are applied.