Application of Support Vector Machine Algorithm Incorporating Slime Mould Algorithm Strategy in Ancient Glass Classification

Abstract

Glass products are important evidence of early East–West cultural exchanges. Ancient glass in China mostly consisted of lead glass, and potassium glass is widely believed to be imported abroad. In order to figure out the origin of glass artefacts, it is crucial to define the type of glass products accurately. In contemporary research on the chemical composition of ancient glass products, potassium glass is separated from lead glass primarily by the weight ratio of oxides or the proportion of lead-containing compounds. This approach can be excessively subjective and prone to mistakes while calculating the mass fraction of compounds containing potassium. So, it is better to find out the link between the proportion of glass’s chemical composition and its classifications during the weathering process of the glass products, to develop an effective classification model using machine learning techniques. In this research, we suggest employing the slime mould approach to optimise the parameters of a support vector machine and examine a 69-group glass chemical composition dataset. In addition, the results of the proposed algorithm are compared to those of commonly used classification models: decision trees (DT), random forests (RF), support vector machines (SVM), and support vector machines optimised by genetic algorithms (GA-SVM). The results of this research indicated that the support vector machine method with the sticky slime mould algorithm strategy is the most effective. On the training set, 100% accuracy was attained, while on the test set, 97.50% accuracy was attained in this research. The research results demonstrate that the support vector machine algorithm combining the slime mould algorithm strategy is capable of providing a trustworthy classification reference for future glass artefacts.