As a global-optimized and naturally inspired algorithm, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is characterized by its high quality and easy application in practical optimization problems. However, PSO has some obvious drawbacks, such as early convergence and slow convergence speed. Therefore, we introduced some appropriate improvements to PSO and proposed a novel chaotic PSO variant with arctangent acceleration coefficient (CPSO-AT). A total of 10 numerical optimization functions were employed to test the performance of the proposed CPSO-AT algorithm. Extensive contrast experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The experimental results showed that the proposed CPSO-AT algorithm converges quickly and has better stability in numerical optimization problems compared with other PSO variants and other kinds of well-known optimal algorithms.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a common metaheuristic algorithm. However, when dealing with practical engineering structure optimization problems, it is prone to premature convergence during the search process and falls into a local optimum. To strengthen its performance, combining several ideas of the differential evolution algorithm (DE), a dynamic probability mutation particle swarm optimization with chaotic inertia weight (CWDEPSO) is proposed. The main improvements are achieved by improving the parameters and algorithm mechanism in this paper. The former proposes a novel inverse tangent chaotic inertia weight and sine learning factors. Besides, the scaling factor and crossover probability are improved by random distributions, respectively. The latter introduces a monitoring mechanism. By monitoring the convergence of PSO, a developed mutation operator with a more reliable local search capability is adopted and increases population diversity to help PSO escape from the local optimum effectively. To evaluate the effectiveness of the CWDEPSO algorithm, 24 benchmark functions and two groups of engineering optimization experiments are used for numerical and engineering optimization, respectively. The results indicate CWDEPSO offers better convergence accuracy and speed compared with some well-known metaheuristic algorithms.