Facet separation for disjunctive constraints with network flow representation

Abstract We present a novel algorithm for separating facet-inducing inequalities for the convex-hull of the union of polytopes representing a disjunctive constraint of special structure. It is required that the union of polytopes admit a certain network flow representation. The algorithm is based on a new, graph theoretic characterization of the facets of the convex-hull. Moreover, we characterize the family of polytopes that are representable by the networks under consideration. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by computational results on a set of benchmark problems.