Locating the fault section in distribution network quickly and precisely is crucial for reducing the outage time and resuming the operation. A fault section location method based on sine cosine algorithm (SCA) is proposed. SCA has the capability of searching the optimal solution using mathematical model based on sine and cosine functions. It is with advantages of simple principle, easy implementation, and strong search ability. Simulations are designed to comparatively analyze its accuracy and rapidity, and investigate the influence of algorithm parameters. The results show that SCA performs well on single and multiple faults with distorted and/or lost information.