Intelligent PID Controller Tuned by Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm for Vibration Suppression of Horizontal Flexible Structure

Flexible structure offers various advantages such as being lightweight, efficient, quick system response and low energy consumption. However, this structure produces too much vibration which leads to system failure. To overcome this drawback, this project developed an intelligent vibration controller based on Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) and incorporated into a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller. BFO is a metaheuristic approach categorized as an evolutionary algorithm recently developed, and a nature-inspired optimization algorithm. BFO has been successfully applied to solve some engineering problems due to its simplicity and ease of implementation. Therefore, by introducing BFO to the PID controller, the desired parameters to control vibration experienced by a horizontal flexible plate can be easily found. The performance of the intelligent PID controller was compared to the conventional tuning method known as Ziegler-Nichols (ZN). It was noticed that the PID controller tuned by BFO successfully outperformed the PID controller tuned by ZN by achieving a high attenuation at the first mode of vibration of 44.65 dB as compared to the latter which was only attenuated at the first mode of vibration at 12.8 dB. The developed PID controller was also able to maintain a good performance level even when this system was introduced to multiple sinusoidal disturbance.