A comparative study of constraint-handling techniques in evolutionary constrained multiobjective optimization

Solving constrained multiobjective optimization problems is one of the most challenging areas in the evolutionary computation research community. To solve a constrained multiobjective optimization problem, an algorithm should tackle the objective functions and the constraints simultaneously. As a result, many constraint-handling techniques have been proposed. However, most of the existing constraint-handling techniques are developed to solve test instances (e.g., CTPs) with low dimension and large feasible region. On the other hand, experimental comparisons on different constraint-handling techniques remain scarce. In view of these two issues, in this paper we first construct 18 test instances, each of which exhibits different properties. Afterward, we choose three representative constraint-handling techniques and combine them with nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II to study the performance difference on various conditions. By the experimental studies, we point out the advantages and disadvantages of different constraint-handling techniques.