Building a class of fuzzy equivalence relations (Q2493972)

The main idea in this paper is to define a fuzzy relation \(R\) on a universe \(X\) as \[ R(x,y) = \sum_{i=1}^n T_1(A_i(x),A_i(y)) \] for \(x\) and \(y\) in \(X\), \(T_1\) a t-norm, and \((A_1,A_2,\ldots,A_n)\) a Ruspini partition of \(X\). In other words, the similarity of \(x\) and \(y\) is computed based on the extent of their common membership in the fuzzy sets \(A_1, A_2, \ldots, A_n\). Among other things, sufficient conditions for \(T_1\) are given such that \(R\) is a fuzzy \(T_2\)-equivalence relation for a certain t-norm \(T_2\) (typically different from \(T_1\) in the paper). Most of the results are formulated for \(T_1\) a strict t-norm with a convex additive generator. For \(T_1\) the minimum t-norm, this work goes back to the pioneering work on fuzzy clustering of \textit{J. C. Bezdek} and \textit{J. D. Harris} [Fuzzy Sets. Syst. 1, 111--127 (1978; Zbl 0442.68093)], who showed that the resulting fuzzy relation \(R\) is \(T_2\)-transitive with \(T_2\) the Łukasiewicz t-norm.