Exact penalty method for the nonlinear bilevel programming problem

In this paper, following the method of replacing the lower level problem with its Kuhn-Tucker optimality condition, we transform the nonlinear bilevel programming problem into a normal nonlinear programming problem with the complementary slackness constraint condition. Then, we get the penalized problem of the normal nonlinear programming problem by appending the complementary slackness condition to the upper level objective with a penalty. We prove that this penalty function is exact and the penalized problem and the nonlinear bilevel programming problem have the same global optimal solution set. Finally, we propose an algorithm for the nonlinear bilevel programming problem. The numerical results show that the algorithm is feasible and efficient.