Vibration Suppression of the Flexible Beam Structure Using PID Controller Tuned by Advanced Firefly Algorithm

The use of flexible beam structures is widespread across various industries due to their numerous advantages, including reduced energy consumption, cost-effectiveness, faster movements, and improved efficiency when compared to rigid beam structures. This research focuses on employing a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller to regulate the vibration level of a flexible beam structure. The tuning of this PID controller is crucial to maximize its performance. Initially, the PID controller is heuristically tuned, successfully suppressing undesired vibrations in the flexible beam structure. Subsequently, an evolutionary algorithm, specifically the Firefly Algorithm (FA) and its advanced version, the Advanced Firefly Algorithm (AFA), is employed to optimize the PID controller. The findings demonstrate that the PID controller optimized through the evolutionary algorithm exhibits superior performance in vibration suppression compared to the heuristically tuned PID controller. Moreover, the comparison between FA and AFA reveals that AFA outperforms FA in enhancing the performance of the PID controller. The PID-FA achieved a reduction percentage of up to 96.7%, while the PID-AFA achieved a reduction percentage of up to 98.8%.