A co-evolutionary improved multi-ant colony optimization for ship multiple and branch pipe route design

This paper presents a co-evolutionary improved multi-ant colony optimization (CIMACO) algorithm for ship multi and branch pipe route design. The purpose of CIMACO algorithm is to design appropriate pipe routes to connect the starting points and ending points in the layout space under various kinds of constraints. The ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm is improved according to the characteristics of ship pipe routing which is used to solve the single pipe routing problem. Based on the improved ACO algorithm, the multi ant colony optimization (MACO) algorithm with co-evolution mechanism is used to solve the multi and branch pipe routing problem. In this paper, the pheromone direction information and pheromone extension process are developed in the proposed algorithm to improve the calculation performance. Compared with conventional method, CIMACO algorithm is better at avoiding the problem of local optimum and accelerating the convergence rate. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed algorithm. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.