Meta-model structural monitoring with cutting-edge AAE-VMD fusion alongside optimized machine learning methods

Transfer learning significantly enhances machine learning by leveraging knowledge from one dataset to boost performance on another, which is particularly beneficial when labelled data ares limited or costly. Sensor fusion, an essential technique in structural health monitoring, improves the effectiveness of transfer learning by combining data from multiple sensors to extract more informative features. This article proposes a novel meta-model structural monitoring using a new data fusion method named the adversarial autoencoder (AAE)–variational mode decomposition (VMD) algorithm, which integrates optimization algorithms, transfer learning, and machine learning techniques for damage detection tasks. The proposed meta-model combines transfer learning with an optimized machine learning framework for training and employs pretrained models for testing across diverse datasets. First, the tensors are fused using the AAE approach into 300 data points, reducing noise and outliers, performing dimensionality reduction, and enriching the training and test datasets. Then, a preprocessing step involves decomposing and denoising tensors using the VMD algorithm, followed by selecting the most informative intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) based on their variance. These selected IMFs are concatenated, and 13 statistical features are extracted from them and used as inputs for machine learning models. Various optimization algorithms are employed to fine-tune the hyperparameters of the machine learning models for optimal classification results. Validation of this meta-model utilizes the dataset collected from a steel grandstand structure, available in benchmark dataset format. For decomposed fused tensors, both particle swarm optimization and covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy emerge as equally effective optimization techniques for K-nearest neighbours (KNN), consistently achieving the highest mean test accuracy and F1 score of 99.5%. Conversely, KNN stands out as a robust and reliable classification algorithm for denoised fused tensors in transfer learning classification problems, consistently demonstrating perfect accuracy and an F1 score of 1.0 ± 0.0 across all optimization techniques.