Hybridization of Grey Wolf Optimizer and Crow Search Algorithm Based on Dynamic Fuzzy Learning Strategy for Large-Scale Optimization

A novel optimization algorithm named hybrid grey wolf optimizer with crow search algorithm (GWO-CSA) is developed in this paper for handling large-scale numerical optimization problems. The proposed GWO-CSA algorithm combines the strong points of both grey wolf optimizer (GWO) and crow search algorithm (CSA) with the aim to escape from local optima with faster convergence than the standard GWO and CSA. In this algorithm, GWO operates in enhancing the exploration ability while CSA works as a local searching scheme to emphasize the exploitation capability to achieve global optimal solutions. In this sense, the movement direction and speed of leader grey wolf (alpha) is improved by incorporating the CSA phase. Also, a dynamic fuzzy learning strategy (DFLS) is introduced to enable the occurring of tiny changes in the neighborhood of the best solution to avoid the caught in the local optima and refine the quality of the obtained solution. The robustness and efficiency of the proposed GWO-CSA algorithm are investigated on fifteen CEC 2015 benchmark problems in addition to four large-scale problems and four real applications related to engineering design optimization taken from the literature. The comprehensive comparisons with other algorithms have demonstrated the effectiveness of GWO-CSA to address optimization tasks.