Recently, many design problems in the field of electrical engineering tend to be more complex, which are
characterized by large scale in size, strong nonlinearity for performance analysis, and multi-dimensional design
parameters. Therefore, it is not easy to seek for optimum effectively by traditional optimization algorithms. In
order to solve optimal design of complex practical problems, in this paper, a novel hybrid optimization algorithm
based on the differential evolution algorithm and the black hole theory is proposed and investigated. The
differential evolution (DE) algorithm owns good diversity and flexibility, while the black-hole based optimization
algorithm (BHBO) possesses faster convergence. In addition, these two algorithms have simple structures.
The proposed algorithm with better merits combination may guarantee better convergence and stronger
robustness than its independent counterparts of DE and BHBO. The searching performance is deeply investigated
through numerical experiments on benchmark functions and practical electromagnetic applications.