Adding a diversity mechanism to a simple evolution strategy to solve constrained optimization problems

In this paper, we propose the use of a simple evolution strategy (SES) (i.e., a (1 + λ)-ES with self-adaptation that uses three tournament rules based on feasibility) coupled with a diversity mechanism to solve constrained optimization problems. The proposed mechanism is based on multiobjective optimization concepts taken from an approach called the niched-Pareto genetic algorithm (NPGA). The main advantage of the proposed approach is that it does not require the definition of any extra parameters, other than those required by an evolution strategy. The performance of the proposed approach is shown to be highly competitive with respect to other constraint-handling techniques representative of the state-of-the-art in the area when using a set of well-known benchmarks.