Application and Improvement of PSO Algorithm in Structural Damage Diagnosis

In order to study Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and structural damage diagnosis, a method based on PSO algorithm and Evidence theory is presented in this paper. First, structural frequency and modal strain energy are considered as two kinds of information sources, and frequency change method and modal strain energy method are utilized to extract damage information. Then, evidence theory is utilized to integrate the two information sources and preliminarily detect structural damage locations. Finally, the PSO algorithm is used to identify structural damage extent. An improved PSO algorithm is also presented. Simulation results show that the evidence theory can identify the suspected damage locations, and the PSO algorithm can precisely detect the damage extent. It can also be observed that the improved PSO algorithm is obviously better than the simple PSO algorithm.