A New Hybridization Approach between the Fireworks Algorithm and Grey Wolf Optimizer Algorithm

The main aim of this paper is to present a new hybridization approach for combining two powerful metaheuristics, one inspired by physics and the other one based on bioinspired phenomena. The first metaheuristic is based on physics laws and imitates the explosion of the fireworks and is called Fireworks Algorithm; the second metaheuristic is based on the behavior of the grey wolf and belongs to swarm intelligence methods, and this method is called the Grey Wolf Optimizer algorithm. For this work we studied and analyzed the advantages of the two methods and we propose to enhance the weakness of both methods, respectively, with the goal of obtaining a new hybridization between the Fireworks Algorithm (FWA) and the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO), which is denoted as FWA-GWO, and that is presented in more detail in this work. In addition, we are presenting simulation results on a set of problems that were tested in this paper with three different metaheuristics (FWA, GWO, and FWA-GWO) and these problems form a set of 22 benchmark functions in total. Finally, a statistical study with the goal of comparing the three different algorithms through a hypothesis test (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>Z</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:math>-test) is presented for supporting the conclusions of this work.