Archimedean overlap functions: The ordinal sum and the cancellation, idempotency and limiting properties

Overlap functions are a particular type of aggregation functions, given by increasing continuous commutative bivariate functions defined over the unit square, satisfying appropriate boundary conditions. Overlap functions are applied mainly in classification problems, image processing and in some problems of decision making based on some kind of fuzzy preference relations, in which the associativity property is not strongly required. Moreover, the class of overlap functions is reacher than the class of t-norms, concerning some properties like idempotency, homogeneity, and, mainly, the self-closedness feature with respect to the convex sum and the aggregation by generalized composition of overlap functions. This flexibility of overlap functions increases their applicability. The aim of this papers is to introduce the concept of Archimedean overlap functions, presenting a study about the cancellation, idempotency and limiting properties, and providing a characterization of such class of functions. The concept of ordinal sum of overlap functions is also introduced, providing constructing/representing methods of certain classes of overlap functions related to idempotency, cancellation, limiting and Archimedean properties. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.