DETDO: An adaptive hybrid dandelion optimizer for engineering optimization

Dandelion Optimizer (DO) is a recently proposed swarm intelligence algorithm that coincides with the process of finding the best reproduction site for dandelion seeds. Compared with the classical Meta-heuristic algorithms, DO exhibits strong competitiveness, but it also has some drawbacks. In this paper, we proposed an adaptive hybrid dandelion optimizer called DETDO by combining three strategies of adaptive tent chaotic mapping, differential evolution (DE) strategy, and adaptive t-distribution perturbation to address the shortcomings of weak DO development, easy to fall into local optimum and slow convergence speed. Firstly, the adaptive tent chaos mapping is used in the initialization phase to obtain a uniformly distributed high-quality initial population, which helps the algorithm to enter the correct search region quickly. Secondly, the DE strategy is introduced to increase the diversity of dandelion populations to avoid algorithm stagnation, which improves the exploitation capability and the accuracy of the optimal solution. Finally, adaptive t-distribution perturbation around the elite solution successfully balances the exploration and exploitation phases while improving the convergence speed through a reasonable conversion from Cauchy to Gaussian distribution. The proposed DETDO is compared with classical or advanced optimization algorithms on CEC2017 and CEC2019 test sets, and the experimental results and statistical analysis demonstrate that the algorithm has better optimization accuracy and speed. In addition, DETDO has obtained the best results in solving six real-world engineering design problems. Finally, DETDO is applied to two bar topology optimization cases. Under a series of complex constraints, DETDO produces a lighter bar structure than the current scheme. It further illustrates the effectiveness and applicability of DETDO in practical problems. The above results mean that DETDO with strong competitiveness will become a preferred swarm intelligence algorithm to cope with optimization problems.