Designing market-based control with a genetic algorithm

Semi-active devices are low-cost as well as small, and, by changing theproperties of low-power intensive structures, the aims of control are accomplished. on theother hand, the limited control force, which can be applied to the structure for each damper,causes more dampers to be used in structures compared to larger and stronger controldevices which are more costly. these dampers coupled with sensors and the structurethemselves make a complex dynamic system which is best controlled by a decentralizedmethod, such as market-based control (mbc). in mbc, the actuators and the supplyenergy are modeled as the buyer and the seller, respectively, in the market place. to denethe demand function of the buyer and the supply function of the seller, some weightingconstants have to be chosen. the performance of the mbc correlates with prudent selectionof the weighting constants. in this study, a novel method for designing mbc using a geneticalgorithm (ga) is presented. the mbc approach is applied to three linear structureshaving ve, ten and twenty oors, and the resulting solutions show the merits of the newmethods for tuning mbc as opposed to solutions using a centralized linear quadraticregulator (lqr).