In this paper, a novel Snail Homing and Mating Search (SHMS) algorithm is proposed. It is inspired from the biological behaviour of the snails. Snails continuously travels to find food and a mate, leaving behind a trail of mucus that serves as a guide for their return. Snails tend to navigate by following the available trails on the ground and responding to cues from nearby shelter homes. The proposed SHMS algorithm is investigated by solving several unimodal and multimodal functions. The solutions are validated using standard statistical tests such as two-sided and pairwise signed rank Wilcoxon test and Friedman rank test. The solution obtained from the SHMS algorithm exhibited superior robustness as well as search space exploration capabilities within the less computational cost. The real-world application of SHMS algorithm is successfully demonstrated in the engineering design domain by solving three cases of design and economic optimization shell and tube heat exchanger problem. The objective function value and other statistical results obtained using SHMS algorithm are compared with other well-known metaheuristic algorithms.

翻译：本文提出了一种新型蜗牛归巢与求偶搜索算法（SHMS），灵感来源于蜗牛的生物学行为。蜗牛通过持续移动寻找食物和配偶，并在身后留下黏液痕迹作为归巢导航指引。它们倾向于遵循地面现有痕迹并响应附近庇护场所的线索进行导航。通过求解多个单峰与多峰函数验证了所提SHMS算法的性能，并采用双侧配对符号秩Wilcoxon检验和Friedman秩检验等标准统计检验方法验证了求解结果。SHMS算法获得的解在较低计算成本下展现出优异的鲁棒性和搜索空间探索能力。通过求解管壳式换热器设计与经济优化问题三个工程案例，成功展示了SHMS算法在工程设计领域的实际应用价值。将SHMS算法求得的目标函数值及其他统计结果与其他知名元启发算法进行了对比分析。