Scaling Toolbox

Scaling Toolbox#

Introduction#

The numerical scaling of a model is critical to its robustness and tractability, and can mean the difference between finding a solution and a solver failure. Scaling of non-linear models is a key step in the model development and application workflow, and often requires a significant amount of time and effort. The IDAES Scaling Toolbox aims to assist users in this task.

Key Points#

  • Scaling is critical for model performance

  • Scaling is not a one-off process, but something that needs to be reassessed before each solver call

  • There are three aspects to scaling which are equally important

  • Model scaling is more about avoiding poor scaling than finding “good” scaling

  • Order-of-magnitude scaling factors are often better than exact values

  • A number of tools are available to assist modelers with this task

Topics#