An optimization technique: Storm-association approach

This paper presents an optimization approach from the viewpoints of psychology and artificial intelligence. The new approach, namely storm-association approach, combines two premier manners, the brainstorm and association, originated form psychology aspects. Also, the actual algorithm integrates the advantages of two optimization methods, i.e. genetic algorithm and simulated annealing. The proposed approach not only can avoid the local optimum so as to reach the global optimum but also can be employed to produce some creative solutions. The reliability optimization problems are employed to demonstrate the proposed approach, and the numerical results show that this approach is more efficient than the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing.