An Improved Crow Search Algorithm Based on Spiral Search Mechanism for Solving Numerical and Engineering Optimization Problems

The crow search algorithm (CSA) is a new intelligent optimization algorithm based on the behavior of the crow population, which has been proven to perform well. However, its simple search mechanism also leads to the algorithm's slow convergence speed and its ease of falling into local optimization when solving complex optimization problems. In order to overcome these problems, this paper proposes an improved CSA (ISCSA) based on a spiral search mechanism. By introducing a weight coefficient, an optimal guidance position and a spiral search mechanism, the position equation was updated to accelerate the convergence of the algorithm and make the exploration and exploitation of CSA more balanced. Meanwhile, adding Gaussian variation and random perturbation strategy made it difficult for the algorithm to fall into local optimization. The advantages of the proposed ISCSA were evaluated using 23 benchmark functions and four classical engineering design problems. The experimental and statistical results of 23 test functions showed that the proposed ISCSA could escape from the local optima with higher accuracy and faster convergence than both the CSA and other meta-heuristic optimization algorithms. The calculation results of the four engineering optimization problems showed that compared with other algorithms, ISCSA can solve the practical optimization problem well and has been proved to have strong competitiveness and good performance.