In this paper, a new Hybrid Charged System Search and Particle Swarm Optimization, HCSSPSO, is presented. Although Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has many advantages, including directional search, it has also some disadvantages resulting in slow convergence rate and low performance. On the other hand, the Charged System Search (CSS) is a robust optimization algorithm which has been successfully utilized in. many structural optimization problems. In this study, the goal is to incorporate the positive features of the PSO in CSS and make it more capable of solving optimization problems. The hybrid CSS and PSO is named HCSSPRO, and it uses the positive features of the PSO to further improve the CSS. In order to show the higher performance of the HCSSPSO, it is implemented and applied to some engineering problems. These structures are benchmark examples which are optimized by many other methods and are suitable for comparison. Results of the present algorithm show its better performance and higher convergence rate for the problem studied. (C) 2014 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.
