Analysis of the Influence of Bound Constraint Handling Strategies on the Search Direction in Differential Evolution Algorithms

This paper is aiming to analyze the influence of the boundary constraints handling methods (BCHM) on the search direction in the case of Differential Evolution (DE) optimization algorithms. An experimental analysis for 8 correction methods was conducted, its main aim being the comparison between cosine similarities corresponding to the search direction computed before the application of BCHM and the search direction computed after the application of BCHM. The results of the analysis provide information about how much of the initial search direction is conserved by applying a correction method. Some preliminary theoretical results are also presented.