Improved Wolf Pack Algorithm for Optimum Design of Truss Structures

In order to find a more effective method in structural optimization, an improved wolf pack optimization algorithm was proposed. In the traditional wolf pack algorithm, the problem of falling into local optimum and low precision often occurs. Therefore, the adaptive step size search and Levy's flight strategy theory were employed to overcome the premature flaw of the basic wolf pack algorithm. Firstly, the reasonable change of the adaptive step size improved the fineness of the search and effectively accelerated the convergence speed. Secondly, the search strategy of Levy's flight was adopted to expand the search scope and improved the global search ability of the algorithm. At last, to verify the performance of improved wolf pack algorithm, it was tested through simulation experiments and actual cases, and compared with other algorithms. Experiments show that the improved wolf pack algorithm has better global optimization ability. This study provides a more effective solution to structural optimization problems

The design and applications of the african buffalo algorithm for general optimization problems

Optimization, basically, is the economics of science. It is concerned with the need to maximize profit and minimize cost in terms of time and resources needed to execute a given project in any field of human endeavor. There have been several scientific investigations in the past several decades on discovering effective and efficient algorithms to providing solutions to the optimization needs of mankind leading to the development of deterministic algorithms that provide exact solutions to optimization problems. In the past five decades, however, the attention of scientists has shifted from the deterministic algorithms to the stochastic ones since the latter have proven to be more robust and efficient, even though they do not guarantee exact solutions. Some of the successfully designed stochastic algorithms include Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, Bee Colony Optimization, Artificial Bee Colony Optimization, Firefly Optimization etc. A critical look at these ‘efficient’ stochastic algorithms reveals the need for improvements in the areas of effectiveness, the number of several parameters used, premature convergence, ability to search diverse landscapes and complex implementation strategies. The African Buffalo Optimization (ABO), which is inspired by the herd management, communication and successful grazing cultures of the African buffalos, is designed to attempt solutions to the observed shortcomings of the existing stochastic optimization algorithms. Through several experimental procedures, the ABO was used to successfully solve benchmark optimization problems in mono-modal and multimodal, constrained and unconstrained, separable and non-separable search landscapes with competitive outcomes. Moreover, the ABO algorithm was applied to solve over 100 out of the 118 benchmark symmetric and all the asymmetric travelling salesman’s problems available in TSPLIB95. Based on the successful experimentation with the novel algorithm, it is safe to conclude that the ABO is a worthy contribution to the scientific literature