Simple population-based algorithms for solving optimization problems

Abstract

Heuristic algorithms are simple yet powerful tools that are capable of yielding acceptable results in a reasonable execution time. Hence, they are being extensively used for solving optimization problems by researchers nowadays. Due to the quantum of computing power and hardware available today, a large number of dimensions and objectives are considered and analyzed effectively. This paper proposes new population-based metaheuristic algorithms that are capable of combining different strategies. The new strategies help in fast converging as well as trying to avoid local optima. The proposed algorithms could be used as single-phase as well as two-phase algorithms with different combinations and tuning parameters. “Best”, “Mean” and “Standard Deviation” are computed for thirty trials in each case. The results are compared with many efficient optimization algorithms available in the literature. Sixty-one popular un-constrained benchmark problems with dimensions varying from two to thousand and fifteen constrained real-world engineering problems are used for the analyses. The results show that the new algorithms perform better for several test cases. The suitability of the new algorithms for solving multi-objective optimization problems is also studied using five numbers of two-objective ZDT problems. Pure Diversity, Spacing, Spread and Hypervolume are the metrics used for the evaluation.