Comparative study of two optimization methods for structural damage severity estimation

Abstract

This paper presents comparative assessment of the performance characteristics of two optimiza-tion algorithms, namely a deterministic nonlinear least squares (NLS) optimization and a stochastic adaptive simulated (ASA) annealing global optimization, implemented in the context of a two-stage structural damage severity estimation approach. First, both the standard NLS and global ASA optimization algorithms were em-ployed to estimate single as well as multiple structural damage severity via minimization of a cost function expressed in terms of the scalar distance between the "damage- sensitive" response parameter determined from a potentially damaged structure and that computed from a finite el..