A Plant Propagation Algorithm for Constrained Engineering Optimisation Problems

Optimisation problems arising in industry are some of the hardest, often because of the tight specifications of the products involved.
They are almost invariably constrained and they involve highly nonlinear, and non-convex functions both in the objective and in the
constraints. It is also often the case that the solutions requiredmust be of high quality and obtained in realistic times. Although there
are already a number of well performing optimisation algorithms for such problems, here we consider the novel Plant Propagation
Algorithm (PPA) which on continuous problems seems to be very competitive. It is presented in a modified form to handle a
selection of problems of interest.Comparative results obtained with PPAand state-of-the-art optimisation algorithms of theNatureinspired
type are presented and discussed. On this selection of problems, PPA is found to be as good as and in some cases superior
to these algorithms.