Bridge Model Updating Using Response Surface Method and Genetic Algorithm

A finite-element (FE) model of a structure is a highly idealized engineering model that may or may not truly reflect the physical structure. The purpose of model updating is to modify the FE model of a structure in order to obtain better agreement between the numerical and field-measured structure responses. In this paper, a new practical and user-friendly FE model updating method is presented. The new method utilizes the response surface method for the best experimental design of the parameters to be updated based on which numerical analysis can be performed in order to obtain explicit relationships between the structural responses and parameters from the simulation results. The parameters are then be updated using the genetic algorithm (GA) by minimizing an objective function. A numerical example of a simply supported beam has been used to demonstrate the concept. This method has also been applied to the model updating of an existing bridge. Results show that this method works well and achieves reasonable physical explanations for the updated parameters.