A many-objective evolutionary algorithm based on directional diversity and favorable convergence

The performances of Pareto-based multi-objective evolutionary algorithms deteriorate severely when solving many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs) mainly due to the loss of selection pressure and inappropriate design in diversity maintenance mechanism. To handling MaOPs, this paper proposes a many-objective evolutionary algorithm (MaOEA) based on directional diversity and favorable convergence (MaOEA-DDFC). In the algorithm, the mating selection based on favorable convergence and Pareto-dominance is applied to strengthen the selection pressure while an environmental selection considering directional diversity and favorable convergence is designed in order to make a good trade-off between diversity and convergence. To validate algorithm performance, seven DTLZ problems with 3, 5, 7 and 10 objectives are tested. Experimental results show that the proposed MaOEA-DDFC performs better than five state-of-the-art MaOEAs in terms of inverted generational distance and hypervolume indicators.