Meta-heuristic and Evolutionary Algorithms for Engineering Optimization

19 Plant Propagation Algorithm

Summary

This chapter describes the plant propagation algorithm (PPA) that emulates the multiplication of plants akin to strawberry. The history of the PPA and its applications are reviewed, the PPA is mapped to the natural process of plant propagation, the PPA is described in detail, and a pseudocode of the PPA is introduced.

19.1 Introduction

The plant propagation algorithm (PPA) is inspired by propagating plants akin to the strawberry plant (Salhi and Fraga, 2011). They tested the PPA with low‐dimensional single‐ and multi‐objective problems. The results showed that the PPA has merits and deserves further testing and research on higher‐dimensional problems. Sulaiman et al. (2014) applied the PPA to solve large problems. The PPA is attractive because, among other things, it is easy to implement. It also involves only a few parameters that are relatively simple to specify unlike most other meta‐heuristic algorithms.

19.2 Mapping the Natural Process to the Planet Propagation Algorithm (PPA)

The PPA resembles the manner in which plants, in particular strawberry plants, propagate. Although some varieties of plants propagate using seeds contained in fruits, hybrid types like strawberry are infertile and issue runners to propagate. In this way, the original plant issues runners to generate new plants.

There is an interesting strategy that propagating plants employ. These plants develop runners. By doing so these plants attempt to place their ...