Parametric Identification of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems Using Combined Levenberg–marquardt and Genetic Algorithm

This technical note presents the parametric identification of multi-degree-of-freedom nonlinear dynamic systems in the time domain using a combination of Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) method and Genetic Algorithm (GA). Here the crucial initial values to the LM algorithm are supplied by GA with a small population size. Two nonlinear systems are studied, the complex one having two nonlinear spring-damper pairs. The springs have cubic nonlinearity (Duffing oscillator) and dampers have quadratic nonlinearity. The effects of noise in the acceleration measurements and sensitivity analysis are also studied. The performance of combined GA and LM method is compared with pure LM and pure GA in terms of solution time, accuracy and number of iterations, and convergence and great improvement is observed. This method is found to be suitable for the identification of complex nonlinear systems, where the repeated solution of the numerically difficult equations over many generations requires enormous computational effort.