Tool For Complex Optimization Problems Research Articles

Experimental Investigation for the Multi-objective Optimization of Machining Parameters on AISI D2 Steel Using Particle Swarm Optimization Coupled with Artificial Neural Network

High Carbon High Chromium (or AISI D2) Steels, owing to the fine surface finish they produce upon grinding, find lot of applications in die casting. Machining parameters affect the surface finish significantly during the grinding operation. In this context, this work puts an effort to arrive at the optimum machining parameters relating to fine surface finish with minimum cutting force. The material removal caused by the abrasive grinding wheel makes the process a very complex and nonlinear machining operation. In many situations, traditional optimization techniques fail to provide realistic optimum conditions because of the associated complexity. In order to overcome this issue, particle swarm optimization (PSO) coupled with artificial neural network (ANN) is applied in this research work for parameter optimization with the objective of achieving minimum surface roughness and cutting force. The machining parameters selected for the investigation were table speed, cross feed and depth of cut and the responses were surface roughness and cutting force. ANNs, inspired from biological neural networks, are well capable of providing patterns, which are too complex in behavior. The ANN model developed was used as the fitness function for PSO to complete the optimization. Optimization was also carried out using conventional response surface methodology-genetic algorithm (RSM-GA) approach in which regression equation developed with RSM was considered as the fitness function for GA. Confirmatory experiments were conducted and the comparison showed that PSO coupled with ANN is a reliable tool for complex optimization problems.

Fibonacci indicator algorithm: A novel tool for complex optimization problems

In this paper a new meta-heuristic algorithm is introduced. This optimization algorithm is inspired by the very popular tool among the technical traders in the stock market called the Fibonacci Indicator. The Fibonacci Indicator uses to predict possible local maximum and minimum prices, and periods in which the price of a stock will experience a significant amount of movement. The proposed Fibonacci Indicator algorithm is validated on several Benchmark functions up to 100 dimensions to have a comparison to algorithms such as DE extensions, PSO extensions, ABC, ABC-PS, CS, MCS and GSA in the ability of convergence and finding the global optimum in different research areas. Finally two engineering design problems are used to show the performance of the algorithm. Application of the proposed Fibonacci Indicator Algorithm in a wide set of benchmark functions has asserted its capability to deal with difficult optimization problems.

Negatively Correlated Search

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) have been shown to be powerful tools for complex optimization problems, which are ubiquitous in both communication and big data analytics. This paper presents a new EA, namely Negatively Correlated Search (NCS), which maintains multiple individual search processes in parallel and models the search behaviors of individual search processes as probability distributions. NCS explicitly promotes negatively correlated search behaviors by encouraging differences among the probability distributions (search behaviors). By this means, individual search processes share information and cooperate with each other to search diverse regions of a search space, which makes NCS a promising method for non-convex optimization. The cooperation scheme of NCS could also be regarded as a novel diversity preservation scheme that, different from other existing schemes, directly promotes diversity at the level of search behaviors rather than merely trying to maintain diversity among candidate solutions. Empirical studies showed that NCS is competitive to well-established search methods in the sense that NCS achieved the best overall performance on 20 multimodal (non-convex) continuous optimization problems. The advantages of NCS over state-of-the-art approaches are also demonstrated with a case study on the synthesis of unequally spaced linear antenna arrays.