Five-elements cycle optimization algorithm for the travelling salesman problem

There are many nature-inspired algorithms being proposed and researched to solve combinatorial optimization problems. The theory of Five-elements in Chinese traditional culture implies a possible approach to solve present-day problems of science and engineering. In this paper, the Five-elements Cycle Model (FECM) is developed based on the mechanism of generation and restriction among five elements, and Five-elements Cycle Optimization (FECO) algorithm is proposed for finding the optimal solution of travelling salesman problems. The performance and parameter comparison of FECO is given by experiments, the comparison with 7 optimization algorithms based on various mechanisms for some TSP instances from TSPLIB are also given, which indicate the availability of FECO.