Continuous ant colony optimisation for active vibration control of flexible beam structures

This paper presents the utilisation of continuous ant colony optimisation algorithm intended for active vibration control of flexible beam structures. Ant colony optimisation algorithm is used to realise a direct controller design scheme with single objective function to minimise vibration at the free end of the beam. The performance of the system is presented in both time and frequency domains and simulation results reveal that good performance is achieved using this approach.