Colonial competitive evolutionary Rao algorithm for optimal engineering design.

Rao algorithms that include three algorithms are very simple and parameter-less algorithms with effective and desirable performance. This paper modifies these three algorithms, merges them, and establishes a powerful group algorithm. In the first optimization step, the suggested algorithm is tested on 30 standard CEC2014 functions with 50 dimensions to compare it with main algorithms, several well-known algorithms, and modified versions of RAO algorithm. It becomes evident in the first test that the suggested optimizer is effective, and reliable for optimization of real-parameter functions, and it has shown its superiority to original RAO algorithm and several modern and modified versions of RAO algorithms for most of the test functions and achieved more acceptable results than them. Moreover, the suggested algorithm benefits a faster convergence characteristic than original RAO algorithms. The proposed Colonial Competitive RAO (CCRAO) has been applied on five popular engineering problems and its results have been compared with those of recent papers. According to the results, CCRAO is an effective, robust, and reliable optimizer for engineering design problems and can contain all useful features of RAO algorithms altogether. CCRAO has succeeded to converge to the best solution for these engineering problems and surpasses most of the other algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]