ENEL445-25S1 (C) Semester One 2025

Applied Engineering Optimisation

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 17 February 2025
End Date: Sunday, 22 June 2025
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 2 March 2025
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 11 May 2025

Description

An advanced course on optimisation techniques and their engineering applications. The course first provides a review of mathematical background, and then covers the formulation of unconstrained/constrained optimisation problems, gradient descent, method of Lagrangian multipliers, and first-order KKT conditions. Other topics include model predictive control, power system optimisation, evolutionary algorithms, constraint satisfaction methods, Bayesian optimization, nonlinear least squares,adaptive filtering and backpropagation for deep neural networks.

Learning Outcomes

  • At the conclusion of this course you should be able to:

  • LO1: Identify, research and formulate optimisation problems in power
    systems, signal processing, machine learning, and control (WA1, WA2, WA4)

  • LO2: Classify the formulated optimisation problems, design and derive practical algorithms to search for the optimal solution (WA3, WA4, WA5)

  • LO3: Using optimisation software to solve formulated optimisation problems, analyse the convergence of the algorithms and investigate the results (WA3, WA4, WA5)

  • LO4: Collaborate with other students and lecturers to formulate a real-world engineering problem as an optimisation problem and design a solution using optimisation software (WA3, WA4, WA9, WA10, WA11)
    • University Graduate Attributes

      This course will provide students with an opportunity to develop the Graduate Attributes specified below:

      Critically competent in a core academic discipline of their award

      Students know and can critically evaluate and, where applicable, apply this knowledge to topics/issues within their majoring subject.

      Employable, innovative and enterprising

      Students will develop key skills and attributes sought by employers that can be used in a range of applications.

Prerequisites

Timetable 2025

Students must attend one activity from each section.

Lecture A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Thursday 13:00 - 14:00 Rehua 528
17 Feb - 6 Apr
28 Apr - 1 Jun
Lecture B
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Tuesday 17:00 - 18:00 Jack Erskine 111
17 Feb - 6 Apr
28 Apr - 1 Jun
Lecture C
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Thursday 10:00 - 11:00 Beatrice Tinsley 112
17 Feb - 6 Apr
28 Apr - 1 Jun

Examinations, Quizzes and Formal Tests

Test A
Activity Day Time Location Weeks
01 Thursday 19:00 - 20:30 A5 Lecture Theatre
31 Mar - 6 Apr

Course Coordinator

Jeremy Watson

Lecturers

Joe Chen and Le Yang

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Test 20%
Progress Report (Group) 10%
Project Presentation 10%
Final Report (Group) 30%
Examination 30%

Textbooks / Resources

Required Texts

J. Martins and A. Ning; Engineering Design Optimization ; Cambridge University Press, 2022 (Freely available from https://mdobook.github.io).

Recommended Reading

J. Nocedal and S.J. Wright; Numerical Optimization ; Springer, 2000.

R. Baldick; Applied Optimization: Formulation and Algorithms for Engineering Systems ; Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Z. Michalewicz and D.B. Fogel; How to solve it: Modern Heuristics ; Springer, 1998.

Additional Course Outline Information

Mahi ā-Ākonga | Workload (expected distribution of student hours, note 15 points = 150 hours):

Contact Hours

Lectures: 33 hours
Tutorials: 0 hours
Workshops: 0 hours
Laboratories: 0 hours

Independent study

Review of lectures: 33 hours
Test and exam preparation: 24 hours
Assignments: 60 hours
Tutorial preparation: 0 hours
Laboratory calculations: 0 hours

Total 150

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $1,268.00

International fee $6,238.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Electrical and Computer Engineering .

All ENEL445 Occurrences

  • ENEL445-25S1 (C) Semester One 2025