An improved whale optimization algorithm with armed force program and strategic adjustment

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new whale army optimization algorithm with a view to solving multifarious optimization problems. The key novelty of our approach is to modify the original whale optimization algorithm to make it effective to solve the complicated, large-scale and constrained optimization problems. Our modifications mainly embody two aspects: the beneficial strategic adjustment to set key parameters and to help establish base principles in the original optimizer and the introduction of armed force program which classifies the search whales into different categories to achieve efficient cooperation. We evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, using three simple benchmark test functions over thirty CEC-2014 real-parameter numerical optimization problems and three constraint engineering design problems. The test results indicate that this algorithm can provide a faster local convergence rate, a higher convergence accuracy, and a lower computational complexity in comparison to traditional whale optimization algorithms and other sophisticated state of the art whale optimizers. Performance wise, it also surpasses many advanced methods for large-scaled complex functions. Furthermore, in this paper we propose a variant of whale army optimization algorithm to specifically address and solve optimizing constrained problems with a high degree of precision.