The balance between the exploration and the exploitation plays a significant role in the meta-heuristic algorithms, especially when they are used to solve large-scale optimization problems. In this paper, we propose a multiple-strategy learning particle swarm optimization algorithm, called MSL-PSO, to solve problems with large-scale variables, in which different learning strategies are utilized in different stages. At the first stage, each individual tries to probe some positions by learning from the demonstrators who have better performance on the fitness value and the mean position of the population. All the best probed positions, each of which has the best fitness among all positions probed by its corresponding individual, will compose a new temporary population. The temporary population will be sorted on the fitness values in a descending order, and will be used for each individual to find its demonstrators, which is based on the rank of the best probed solution in the temporary population and the rank of the individual in the current population, to learn using a new strategy in the second stage. The first stage is used to improve the exploration capability, and the second one is expected to balance the convergence and diversity of the population. To verify the effectiveness of MSL-PSO for solving large-scale optimization problems, some empirical experiments are conducted, which include CEC2008 problems with 100, 500, and 1000 dimensions, and CEC2010 problems with 1000 dimensions. Experimental results show that our proposed MSL-PSO is competitive or has a better performance compared with ten state-of-the-art algorithms.

Many evolutionary algorithms have been proposed for multi-/many-objective optimization problems; however, the tradeoff of convergence and diversity is still the challenge for optimization algorithms. In this paper, we propose a modified particle swarm optimization based on decomposition framework with different ideal points on each reference vector, called MPSO/DD, for many-objective optimization problems. In the MPSO/DD algorithm, the decomposition strategy is used to ensure the diversity of the population, and the ideal point on each reference vector can draw the population converge faster to the optimal front. The position of each individual will be updated by learning the demonstrators in its neighborhood that have less distance to the ideal point along the reference vector. Eight state-of-the-art evolutionary multi-/many-objective optimization algorithms are adopted to compare the performance with MPSO/DD for solving many-objective optimization problems. The experimental results on seven DTLZ test problems with 3, 5, 8, 10, 15 and 20 objectives, respectively, show the efficiency of our proposed method on solving problems with high-dimensional objective space.

Surrogate-assisted meta-heuristic algorithms have shown good performance to solve the computationally expensive problems within a limited computational resource. Compared to the method that only one surrogate model is utilized, the surrogate ensembles have shown more efficiency to get a good optimal solution. In this paper, we propose a bi-stage surrogate-assisted hybrid algorithm to solve the expensive optimization problems. The framework of the proposed method is composed of two stages. In the first stage, a number of global searches will be conducted in sequence to explore different sub-spaces of the decision space, and the solution with the maximum uncertainty in the final generation of each global search will be evaluated using the exact expensive problems to improve the accuracy of the approximation on corresponding sub-space. In the second stage, the local search is added to exploit the sub-space, where the best position found so far locates, to find a better solution for real expensive evaluation. Furthermore, the local and global searches in the second stage take turns to be conducted to balance the trade-off of the exploration and exploitation. Two different meta-heuristic algorithms are, respectively, utilized for the global and local search. To evaluate the performance of our proposed method, we conduct the experiments on seven benchmark problems, the Lennard–Jones potential problem and a constrained test problem, respectively, and compare with five state-of-the-art methods proposed for solving expensive problems. The experimental results show that our proposed method can obtain better results, especially on high-dimensional problems.

Given dynamic variations in the scheduling environment for ready-mixed concrete vehicles, an advance schedule should be able to accommodate such changes. The authors studied the rescheduling characteristics of ready-mixed concrete vehicle fleet operations and measured the dynamics of randomly arriving customers’ requirements. Based on the study’s findings, a corresponding rescheduling strategy and a hybrid heuristic algorithm are proposed to optimize the rescheduling system for such vehicles. The simulation results validated the model and proved the effectiveness of the rescheduling strategy and the hybrid heuristic algorithm regarding the optimization of the rescheduling of ready-mixed concrete vehicles.