Improved cuckoo search for reliability optimization problems

An efficient approach to solve engineering optimization problems is the cuckoo search algorithm. It is a recently developed meta-heuristic optimization algorithm. Normally, the parameters of the cuckoo search are kept constant. This may result in decreasing the efficiency of the algorithm. To cope with this issue, the cuckoo search parameters should be tuned properly. In this paper, an improved cuckoo search algorithm, enhancing the accuracy and convergence rate of the cuckoo search algorithm, is presented. Then, the performance of the proposed algorithm is tested on some complex engineering optimization problems. They are four well-known reliability optimization problems, a large-scale reliability optimization problem as well as a complex system, which is a 15-unit system reliability optimization problem. Finally, the results are compared with those given by several well-known methods. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.