Russ Rhinehart

author of "Engineering Optimization: Applications, Methods, and Analysis"

January 7, 2019

Russ Rhinehart, professor and BP Chair emeritus in the School of Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University, has 13 years of experience in industry and 29 years in academe. He was head of the School for 13 years. His career interests have been modeling, optimization, and control of processes and products.

Rhinehart is a fellow of the International Society of Automation, and served as editor-in-chief of ISA Transactions during its recent development years. He was inducted into the Process Automation Hall of Fame, provides monthly Develop Your Potential articles for CONTROL magazine, and received a Fray International Sustainability Award. He is a past president of the American Automatic Control Council. Now “retired” he is working to disseminate techniques with his web site, www.r3eda.com, books, handbook chapters, and articles. He enjoys family, woodworking, and gardening.

“Engineering Optimization” provides a practically-focused introduction to modern engineering optimization best practices, covering fundamental analytical and numerical techniques throughout each stage of the optimization process.

Although essential algorithms are explained in detail, the focus lies more in the human function: how to create an appropriate objective function, choose decision variables, identify and incorporate constraints, define convergence, and other critical issues that define the success or failure of an optimization project.

Examples, exercises, and homework throughout reinforce the author’s “do, not study” approach to learning, underscoring the application-oriented discussion that provides a deep, generic understanding of the optimization process that can be applied to any field.

Providing excellent reference for students or professionals, “Engineering Optimization” describes and develops a variety of algorithms, including gradient based, direct search, along with surrogate functions for surface characterization.

It provides guidance on optimizer choice by application, and explains how to determine appropriate optimizer parameter values and details current best practices for critical stages of specifying an optimization procedure, including decision variables, defining constraints, and relationship modeling

“Engineering Optimization” provides access to software and Visual Basic macros for Excel on the companion website, along with solutions to examples presented in the book.

URL: https://library-dep.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2019-honorees/russ-rhinehart

Last Updated: 19 January 2021