The
robust design of performance/safety-critical process systems,
from a model-based perspective, remains an existing challenge. Hybrid
first-principles data-driven models offer the potential to dramatically
improve model prediction accuracy, stepping closer to the digital
twin concept. Within this context, worst-case engineering design feasibility
and reliability problems give rise to a class of semi-infinite program
(SIP) formulations with hybrid models as coupling equality constraints.
Reduced-space deterministic global optimization methods are exploited
to solve this class of SIPs to ϵ-global optimality in finitely
many iterations. This approach is demonstrated on two challenging
case studies: a nitrification reactor for a wastewater treatment system
to address worst-case feasibility verification of dynamical systems
and a three-phase separation system plagued by numerical domain violations
to demonstrate how they can be overcome using a nonsmooth SIP formulation
with hybrid models and a validity constraint incorporated.