Fire Hawk Optimizer: a novel metaheuristic algorithm

Abstract This study proposes the Fire Hawk Optimizer (FHO) as a novel metaheuristic algorithm based on the foraging behavior of whistling kites, black kites and brown falcons. These birds are termed Fire Hawks considering the specific actions they perform to catch prey in nature, specifically by means of setting fire. Utilizing the proposed algorithm, a numerical investigation was conducted on 233 mathematical test functions with dimensions of 2–100, and 150,000 function evaluations were performed for optimization purposes. For comparison, a total of ten different classical and new metaheuristic algorithms were utilized as alternative approaches. The statistical measurements include the best, mean, median, and standard deviation of 100 independent optimization runs, while well-known statistical analyses, such as Kolmogorov–Smirnov, Wilcoxon, Mann–Whitney, Kruskal–Wallis, and Post-Hoc analysis, were also conducted. The obtained results prove that the FHO algorithm exhibits better performance than the compared algorithms from literature. In addition, two of the latest Competitions on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), such as CEC 2020 on bound constraint problems and CEC 2020 on real-world optimization problems including the well-known mechanical engineering design problems, were considered for performance evaluation of the FHO algorithm, which further demonstrated the superior capability of the optimizer over other metaheuristic algorithms in literature. The capability of the FHO is also evaluated in dealing with two of the real-size structural frames with 15 and 24 stories in which the new method outperforms the previously developed metaheuristics.