Precise identification of moving vehicular parameters based on improved glowworm swarm optimization algorithm

Abstract

This paper proposes an indirect method for the identification of moving vehicular parameters using the dynamic responses of the vehicle. The moving vehicle is modelled as 2-DOF system with 5 parameters and 4-DOF system with 12 parameters, respectively. Finite element method is used to establish the equation of the coupled bridge–vehicle system. The dynamic responses of the system are calculated by Newmark direct integration method. The parameter identification problem is transformed into an optimization problem by minimizing errors between the calculated dynamic responses of the moving vehicle and those of the simulated measured responses. Glowworm swarm optimization algorithm (GSO) is used to solve the objective function of the optimization problem. A local search method is introduced into the movement phase of GSO to enhance the accuracy and convergence rate of the algorithm. Several test cases are carried out to verify the efficiency of the proposed method and the results show that the vehicular parameters can be identified precisely with the present method and it is not sensitive to artificial measurement noise.