Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 395101, 12 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/395101
Research Article

Optimal Sensor Placement for Health Monitoring of High-Rise Structure Based on Genetic Algorithm

Ting-Hua Yi,1,2 Hong-Nan Li,1 and Ming Gu2

1Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116023, China
2State Key Laboratory for Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China

Received 2 December 2010; Accepted 2 March 2011

Academic Editor: Wei-Chiang Hong

Copyright © 2011 Ting-Hua Yi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Optimal sensor placement (OSP) technique plays a key role in the structural health monitoring (SHM) of large-scale structures. Based on the criterion of the OSP for the modal test, an improved genetic algorithm, called “generalized genetic algorithm (GGA)”, is adopted to find the optimal placement of sensors. The dual-structure coding method instead of binary coding method is proposed to code the solution. Accordingly, the dual-structure coding-based selection scheme, crossover strategy and mutation mechanism are given in detail. The tallest building in the north of China is implemented to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the GGA. The sensor placements obtained by the GGA are compared with those by exiting genetic algorithm, which shows that the GGA can improve the convergence of the algorithm and get the better placement scheme.