SUMMARYBased on the stationary co-content theorem in non-linear circuit theory and the penalty function approach in non-linear programming theory, a canonical circuit for simulating general non-linear programming problems with equality and/or inequality constraints has been developed. The task of solving a non-linear optimization problem with constraints reduces to that of finding the solution of the associated canonical circuit using a circuit simulation program, such as SPICE.A catalogue of canonical circuits is given for each class of non-linear programming problem. Using this catalogue, an engineer can solve non-linear optimization problems by a cook-book approach without learning any theory on non-linear programming. Several examples are given which demonstrate how SPICE can be used, without modification, for solving linear programming problems, quadratic programming problems, and polynomial programming problems.
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