Multi-strategy firefly algorithm with selective ensemble for complex engineering optimization problems

Nowadays, more and more optimization techniques are used to deal with complex engineering optimization problems. Firefly algorithm (FA) inspired by the flash communication between fireflies, has been proven to be competitive with other swarm intelligence algorithms and has been widely applied to solve complex engineering optimization problems. However, FA has some defects in dealing with complex engineering optimization problems, such as the exploration and exploitation cannot be well balanced. Therefore, in order to achieve effective performance, the different characteristics of search strategies can be applied at different stages of the search process to achieve a balance between exploration and exploitation. In this paper, a multi-strategy firefly algorithm with selective ensemble (MSEFA) is proposed. In MSEFA, the algorithm has three novel search strategies with different characteristics in the strategy pool. In addition, an idea of selective ensemble is adopted to design a priority roulette selection method. The method can select suitable search strategies in different search stages and coordinate the balance of strategies so that better results can be obtained. Furthermore, a parameter adaptive transformation mechanism is designed to control the decreasing rate of step size α. To verify the effectiveness of MSEFA, performance tests are conducted on the CEC 2013 and CEC 2019 test suites, after which MSEFA is used to solve four complex engineering optimization problems. Experimental results show that MSEFA has the best performance compared with other FA variants and other improved swarm intelligence algorithms. In addition, MSEFA also achieves the best results in dealing with four complex engineering optimization problems. •The proposed MSEFA algorithm can obtain the best results when dealing with optimization problems.•Three novel search strategies with different characteristics in this paper are presented.•A priority roulette selection method is designed to select strategies.