Cauchy mutation boosted Harris hawk algorithm: optimal performance design and engineering applications.

Harris hawks optimization (HHO) has been accepted as one of the well-established swarm-based methods in the community of optimization and machine learning that primarily works based on multiple dynamic features and various exploratory and exploitative traits. Compared with other optimization algorithms, it has been observed that HHO can obtain high-quality solutions for continuous and constrained complex and real-world problems. While there is a wide variety of strategies in the HHO for dealing with diverse situations, there are chances for sluggish performance, where the convergence rate can gradually slow with time, and the HHO may stay stuck in the current relatively better place and may be unable to explore other better areas. To mitigate this concern, this paper combines the Cauchy mutation mechanism into the HHO algorithm named CMHHO. This idea can boost performance and provide a promising optimizer for solving complex optimization problems. The Cauchy mutation mechanism can speed up the convergence of the solution and help HHO explore more promising regions compared to its basic release. On 30 IEEE CEC2017 benchmark functions, the study compared the proposed CMHHO with various conventional and advanced metaheuristics to validate its performance and quality of solutions. It has been found through experiments that the overall optimization performance of CMHHO is far superior to all competitors. The CMHHO method is applied to four engineering challenges to investigate the capabilities of the proposed algorithm in solving real-world problems, and experimental results show that the suggested algorithm is more successful than existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]