Convex envelope of bivariate cubic functions over rectangular regions

Abstract

In recent years many papers have derived polyhedral and non-polyhedral convex envelopes for different classes of functions. Except for the univariate cases, all these classes of functions share the property that the generating set of their convex envelope is a subset of the border of the region over which the envelope is computed. In this paper we derive the convex envelope over a rectangular region for a class of functions which does not have this property, namely the class of bivariate cubic functions without univariate third-degree terms.