Damage assessment of suspension footbridge using vibration measurement data combined with a hybrid bee-genetic algorithm

Optimization algorithms (OAs) are a vital tool to deal with complex problems, and the improvement of OA is inseparable from practical strategies and mechanisms. Among the OAs, Bee Algorithm (BA) is an intelligent algorithm with a simple mechanism and easy implementation, in which effectiveness has been proven when handling optimization problems. Nevertheless, BA still has some fundamental drawbacks, which can hinder its effectiveness and accuracy. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel approach to tackle the shortcomings of BA by combining it with Genetic Algorithm (GA). The main intention is to combine the strengths of both optimization techniques, which are the exploitative search ability of BA and the robustness with the crossover and mutation capacity of GA. An investigation of a real-life suspension footbridge is considered to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. A baseline Finite Element model of the bridge is constructed based on vibration measurement data and model updating, which is used to generate different hypothetical damage scenarios. The proposed HBGA is tested against BA, GA, and PSO to showcase its effectiveness in detecting damage for each scenario. The results show that the proposed algorithm is effective in dealing with the damage assessment problems of SHM.