Applications of Discrete PSO Algorithm to Two-Dimensional Non-Guillotine Rectangular Packing Problems

algorithm was applied to the two-dimensional non-guillotine rectangular packing problems. In this study, two different weight mechanisms in the PSO algorithm are used: fixed inertia weight and nonlinear varying inertia weight. The nonlinear varying inertia weights help to improve the speed of convergence and the search ability. In order to compare the performances of these weight mechanisms, a test problem consisting of 25 rectangular pieces taken from Jakobs [12] is given as an example. For different PSO parameters, trim loss values versus iteration numbers were also examined. This study shows that the nonlinear varying inertia weight simulations yielded approximately 9.3% better results than the fixed inertia weight simulations. Also, the solutions obtained in this study are in the acceptable boundaries for this kind of the packing problems.