Solvers ======= This section provides an overview of using and configuring solvers for IDAES. In general, standard Pyomo solver interfaces and features are used in IDAES, but IDAES provides a few extensions to make working with solvers slightly easier. Some IDAES solver features are documented in other sections, so references are provided as appropriate. .. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1 homotopy Default Solver Config --------------------- The global solver settings can be set via the :ref:`IDAES configuration system`. This feature is handy in IDAES where multiple solver objects are used for initialization before finally solving a problem. Since IDAES default solver settings differ from Pyomo, users must explicitly enable the IDAES solver configuration system with the ``use_idaes_solver_configuration_defaults()`` function. .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.config.use_idaes_solver_configuration_defaults Getting a Solver ---------------- Typically users can use the standard Pyomo SolverFactory to get a solver. If a solver is needed in a general model or utility, a utility function (``idaes.core.solvers.get_solver``) provides a default or user configured solver at runtime. This is used by IDAES core models and tests. Solver Logging -------------- A logger for solver-related log messages can be obtained from the ``idaes.logger.getSolveLogger()`` function (:ref:`documented here`). IDAES also has features for redirecting solver output to a log (see :ref:`Logging Solver Output`). Solver Feature Checking ----------------------- There are some functions available to check what features are available to solvers and to help with basic solver testing. .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.ipopt_has_linear_solver PETSc Utilities --------------- IDAES provides an AMPL solver interface for the PETSc solver suite, `(see the PETSc website) `_. PETSc provides nonlinear equation (NLE) and differential algebraic equation (DAE) solvers. Both NLE and DAE solvers are capable of solving simulation problems with zero degrees of freedom. These solvers may be useful for initial model development, initialization, and running simulation cases without optimization. PETSc includes optimization solvers, but they are not currently supported by the IDAES AMPL solver wrapper. Optimization support will likely be added in the future. DAE Terminology ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For the following discussion regarding the PETSc solver interface, the following terminology is used. * Derivative variable: a time derivative * Differential variable: a variable that is differentiated with respect to time * Algebraic variable: a variable with no explicit time derivative appearing in the problem * State variables: the set of algebraic and differential variables * Time variable: a variable representing time DAE problems do not need to include a time variable, but, if they do, there can only be one. Differential variables do not need to explicitly appear in constraints, but their time derivatives do. DAE problems must have zero degrees of freedom, which means the number of constraints must equal the number of state variables. Installing PETSc ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The PETSc solver is an extra binary package, and not installed by default. If you are using a supported platform, you can use the command ``idaes get-extensions --extra petsc`` to install it. Registered Solvers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Importing ``idaes.core.solvers.petsc`` registers two new solvers "petsc_snes" and "petsc_ts." The "petsc_snes" solver provides nonlinear equation solvers. The SNES (Scalable Nonlinear Equation Solvers) solvers are strictly nonlinear equations solvers, so they cannot directly handle optimization problems and the problem must have zero degrees of freedom. The TS (time-stepping) solvers require specialized suffixes to designate derivative, differential, algebraic, and time variables and the associations between derivative and differential variables. Both the SNES and TS solvers accept the standard scaling factor suffixes, but for TS solvers, derivatives and differential variables cannot be scaled independently, so the differential variable scale is used. Currently, time cannot be scaled for TS solvers. Standard PETSc command line options are available to the solvers except that for compatibility reasons, they are specified with a double dash instead of single. Command line options can be used to set up the SNES and TS solvers. Currently only implicit TS solvers are supported. Commonly used TS types are: * "beuler", implicit Euler, * "cn", Crank-Nicolson, and * "alpha", generalized-alpha method. To get started, important command line options are for SNES solvers are described ``_ and TS options are described ``_. Remember that options specified through the IDAES AMPL interface use a double dash rather than the single dash shown in the PETSc documentation. Users can also set linear solver and preconditioner options, and are encouraged to read the PETSc documentation if needed. Utilities for DAEs with Pyomo.DAE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The easiest way to use the "petsc_ts" solver is to use the utility method that converts a standard Pyomo.DAE to the form used by the solver. Discretization """""""""""""" The utility for solving Pyomo.DAE problems uses the PETSc TS solvers to integrate between selected time points in the Pyomo.DAE discretization. The results for each time point integrated between are stored in the Pyomo model. Optionally the skipped time points can be interpolated from the PETSc solver trajectory data. This can be used to initialize and verify the results of the full time-discretized model. For example, this could be used to determine if the time steps used in the discretization are too big by comparing the integrator solution to the fully discretized solution. To quickly run a DAE model, you can integrate between the first and last time points. Time Variable """"""""""""" Although it is probably not typical of Pyomo.DAE models, a time variable can be specified. Constraints can be written as explicit functions of time. For example, some model input could be ramped up or down as a function of time. Limitations """"""""""" The integrator approach does not support some constraints that can be solved using the full discretized model. For example, you can have constraints to calculate initial conditions, but cannot have constraints that specify final or intermediate conditions. Optimization is not directly possible, but future implementation of optimization solvers in combination with adjoint sensitivity calculations may enable optimization. Non-time-indexed variables and constraints should usually be solved with the initial conditions in the first step. Non-time-indexed variables can optionally be detected and added to the equations solved for the initial conditions, or explicitly specified by the user. Users will have to take care not to include non-time indexed constraints that contain time-indexed variables at times other than the initial time. If such constraints exist for the fully discretized model users should deactivate them as appropriate. Solving """"""" The following function can be used to solve the DAE. .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.petsc.petsc_dae_by_time_element Reading Trajectory Data """"""""""""""""""""""" By specifying the ``--ts_save_trajectory=1`` option the trajectory information will be saved. The ``idaes.core.solvers.petsc.petsc_dae_by_time_element`` function returns trajectory data if saved as a ``PetscTrajectory`` class, which has methods to load, save, and interpolate. .. autoclass:: idaes.core.solvers.petsc.PetscTrajectory :members: Using TS Solvers without Pyomo.DAE """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Most IDAES models use Pyomo.DAE and that is probably the easiest way to set up a DAE problem, however you may directly construct a DAE problem. There are two suffixes that need to be specified to use the PETSc TS solvers from Pyomo. The first is an integer suffix ``dae_suffix``, which specifies the variable types. The algebraic variables do not need to be included, but 0 specifies algebraic variables, 1 specifies differential variables, 2 specifies derivative variables, and 3 specifies the time variable. A variable for time is optional, and only one time variable can be specified. The other suffix is an integer suffix ``dae_link`` which contains differential and derivative variables. The integer in the suffix links the derivative to it's differential variable, by specifying an integer greater than 0 that is unique to the pair. If there are differential variables that do not appear in the constraints, they can be supplied to the ``export_nonlinear_variables`` argument of solve. For the trajectory data, you will also want to use ``symbolic_solver_labels``. To solve the problem, start with the initial conditions in the Pyomo model. After the solve the final conditions will be in the Pyomo model. To get intermediate results, you will need to store the solver trajectory as described previously. Planned Future PETSc Support """""""""""""""""""""""""""" This section provides PETSc features that are planned to be supported in the future, but are not currently supported. * Enable parallel methods * Enable IMEX methods for TS solvers * Enable TAO optimization solvers * Provide PETSc Python functions for reading trajectory data (rather than requiring users to get them manually). Test Models ----------- The ``idaes.core.solvers.features`` module provides functions to return simple models of various types. These models can be used to test if solvers are available and functioning properly. They can also be used to test that various optional solver features are available. These functions all return a tuple where the first element is a model of the specified type, and the remaining elements are the correct solved values for select variables. .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.features.lp .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.features.milp .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.features.nlp .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.features.minlp .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.features.nle .. autofunction:: idaes.core.solvers.features.dae