PMW: The Portuguese Man o' War optimization algorithm

Abstract In the present study, the Portuguese Man o' War (PMW) movement on the fishes hunting route was used as a source of inspiration for the development of the PMW optimization algorithm. The Portuguese Man o' War is a marine creature that moves on the surface of the ocean under the wind force, wave surface currents, wave tension and diffusion current. The PMW feeds of hunting the fishes by poisonous strings. Following the movement of this sea creature, it was realized that there was an "irregular discipline" in its life cycle. In this way, in this paper, by simulating the movement of PMWs along with the use of several innovative solutions, a robust and powerful algorithm was created in two phases of exploration and exploitation. The performance of PMW was discussed by unbound test functions as well as bound engineering problems and compared with the results of other new algorithms. The results show that the proposed algorithm performs better or equal to the existing algorithms, both in terms of obtaining the final response and in reducing the number of calls to the objective function.