Chemical-Reaction-Inspired Metaheuristic for Optimization

-- We encounter optimization problems in our daily lives and in various research domains. Some of them are so hard that we can, at best, approximate the best solutions with (meta-)heuristic methods. However, the huge number of optimization problems and the small number of generally acknowledged methods mean that more metaheuristics are needed to fill the gap. We propose a new metaheuristic, called Chemical Reaction Optimization (CRO), to solve optimization problems. It mimics the interactions of molecules in a chemical reaction to reach a low energy stable state. Simulation results show that CRO is very competitive with the few existing successful metaheuristics, outperforming them in some cases. Moreover, with the No-Free-Lunch theorem, CRO must have equal performance as the others on the average but it can outperform all other metaheuristics when matched to the right problem type. Therefore, it provides a new approach for solving optimization problems. CRO may potentially solve those...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TEC
• Authors: Albert Y. S. Lam, Victor O. K. Li
• Keywords: Chemical Reaction, Metaheuristics, Optimization Problems, TEC 2010