Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2014, Article ID 627416, 10 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/627416
A Plant Propagation Algorithm for Constrained Engineering Optimisation Problems
1Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
2Department of Mathematics, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan KPK, Pakistan
Received 17 February 2014; Accepted 6 April 2014; Published 7 May 2014
Academic Editor: Changzhi Wu
Copyright © 2014 Muhammad Sulaiman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Optimisation problems arising in industry are some of the hardest, often because of the tight specifications of the products involved. They are almost invariably constrained and they involve highly nonlinear, and non-convex functions both in the objective and in the constraints. It is also often the case that the solutions required must be of high quality and obtained in realistic times. Although there are already a number of well performing optimisation algorithms for such problems, here we consider the novel Plant Propagation Algorithm (PPA) which on continuous problems seems to be very competitive. It is presented in a modified form to handle a selection of problems of interest. Comparative results obtained with PPA and state-of-the-art optimisation algorithms of the Nature-inspired type are presented and discussed. On this selection of problems, PPA is found to be as good as and in some cases superior to these algorithms.