Utilizing the Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm for Determining Control Parameters for Civil Structures Subject to Seismic Excitation

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-1-2021

Publication Source

Algorithms

Volume Number

14

Issue Number

10

E-ISSN

19994893

Article Number

292

Abstract

Structural control of civil infrastructure in response to large external loads, such as earth-quakes or wind, is not widely employed due to challenges regarding information exchange and the inherent latencies in the system due to complex computations related to the control algorithm. This study employs front-end signal processing at the sensing node to alleviate computations at the control node and results in a simplistic sum of weighted inputs to determine a control force. The control law simplifies to U = WP, where U is the control force, W is a pre-determined weight matrix, and P is a deconstructed representation of the response of the structure to the applied excitation. Determining the optimal weight matrix for this calculation is non-trivial and this study uses the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with a modified homing feature to converge on a possible solution. To further streamline the control algorithm, various pruning techniques are combined with the PSO algorithm in order to optimize the number of entries in the weight matrix. These optimization techniques are applied in simulation to a five-story structure and the success of the re-sulting control parameters are quantified based on their ability to minimize the information exchange while maintaining control effectiveness. It is found that a magnitude-based pruning method, when paired with the PSO algorithm, is able to offer the most effective control for a structure subject to seismic base excitation.

Keywords

Particle swarm optimization, Pruning, Structural control, Wireless sensors

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