Handling Constrained Multi-objective Optimization By Ignoring
Constraints and Using Two Evolutionary Frameworks
Abstract
Constrained multi-objective optimization problems exist widely in
real-world applications, and they involve a simultaneous optimization of
multiple and often conflicting objectives subject to several equality
and/or inequality constraints. To deal with these problems, a crucial
issue is how to handle constraints effectively. This paper proposes a
simple yet effective constrained decomposition-based multi-objective
evolutionary algorithm. In the proposal, the evolutionary process is
divided into two stages in which constraints are handled differently. In
the first stage, constraints are totally ignored and the population is
pulled toward the unconstrained Pareto-optimal front (PF) by optimizing
objectives only. This can help the proposed algorithm handle well
problems with the following features, i.e., the constrained PF has an
intersection with the unconstrained counterpart, and there are
infeasible regions blocking the way of convergence. In the second stage,
with the purpose of approximating the constrained PF well,constraint
satisfaction is emphasized over objective minimization.Moreover,
different evolutionary frameworks are adopted in the two stages to
promote the performance of the algorithm as much as possible. The
proposed algorithm is comprehensively compared with several
state-of-the-art algorithms on 39 problems (with 266 test instances in
total), including one real-world problem (with 36 instances) in
search-based software engineering. As shown by the experimental results,
the new algorithm performs best on the majority of these problems,
particularly on those with the aforementioned features. In summary, the
suggested algorithm provides an effective way of handling constrained
multi-objective optimization problems.