The Influence of Inertia Weight on Particle Swarm Optimization in Boundary Element Inverse Analysis for Rebar Corrosion Detection

Abstract

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been applied as optimization tool in various engineering problems. Inverse analysis is one of the potential application fields for PSO. In this research, the behavior of PSO, related to its inertia weight, in boundary element inverse analysis for detecting corrosion of rebar in concrete is studied. Boundary element inverse analysis was developed by combining BEM and PSO. The inverse analysis is carried out by means of minimizing a cost function. The cost function is a residual between the calculated and measured potentials on the concrete surface. The calculated potentials are obtained by solving the Laplace’s equation using BEM. PSO is used to minimize the cost function. Thus, the corrosion profile of concrete steel, such as location and size, can be detected. Variation in its inertia weight was applied to analyze the behavior of PSO for inverse analysis. The numerical simulation results show that PSO can be used for the inverse analysis for detecting rebar corrosion by combining with BEM. Also, it shows different behavior in minimizing cost function depending on inertia weight.