On the Cooperation Between Evolutionary Algorithms and Constraint Handling Techniques: A Further Empirical Study

Cooperation between Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and Constraint Handling Techniques (CHTs) plays an important role in Constrained Optimization Evolutionary Algorithms (COEAs). A constrained composite differential evolution (C
²
oDE) sets a good example on the cooperation. This paper tries to further study the inner mechanism, i.e., the effect of different methods on generating and selecting solutions. In the solution generating part, a new method, which adopts stochastic ranking in selecting the best individual in the DE mutation operators, is proposed. In the solution selecting part, a new constraint handling technique combination is added. The experiments on benchmark functions from IEEE CEC2006 verify the effect. During the experiment, it is found that a new cooperation manner performs better than C
²
oDE, which reflects the importance of cooperation.