Hybrid parliamentary optimization and big bang-big crunch algorithm for global optimization

Researchers have developed different metaheuristic algorithms to solve various optimization problems. The efficiency of a metaheuristic algorithm depends on the balance between exploration and exploitation. This paper presents the hybrid parliamentary optimization and big bang-big crunch (HPO-BBBC) algorithm, which is a combination of the parliamentary optimization algorithm (POA) and the big bang-big crunch (BB-BC) optimization algorithm. The intragroup competition phase of the POA is a process that searches for potential points in the search space, thereby providing an exploration mechanism. By contrast, the BB-BC algorithm has an effective exploitation mechanism. In the proposed method, steps of the BB-BC algorithm are added to the intragroup competition phase of the POA in order to improve the exploitation capabilities of the POA. Thus, the proposed method achieves a good balance between exploration and exploitation. The performance of the HPO-BBBC algorithm was tested using well-known mathematical test functions and compared with that of the POA, the BB-BC algorithm, and some other metaheuristics, namely the genetic algorithm, multiverse optimizer, crow search algorithm, dragonfly algorithm, and moth-flame optimization algorithm. The HPO-BBBC algorithm was found to achieve better optimization performance and a higher convergence speed than the above-mentioned algorithms on most benchmark problems.