Solving Malfatti's high dimensional problem by global optimization (Q317131)

The authors consider Malfatti's problem, which was formulated ca. 200 years ago, and survey the history of attempts to solve it. The problem consists in packing three non-overlapping circles of maximum total area in a given triangle. The authors generalize the problem to the high dimensional case and formulate it as a maximization problem with concave objective function and non-convex compact feasible set. Conditions of global optimality by Strekalovsky are applied to the problem and an algorithm for its approximate solution is proposed. The algorithm generates a maximizing sequence for the problem. The authors show that each accumulation point of the sequence is a global solution of the generalized Malfatti problem. Experiences with solving some numerical examples are reported in the concluding part of the paper.