Compressed sensing with smooth L0 constraints for moving force identification from bridge response measurements

Abstract Compressed sensing (CS), as an emerging information sampling technique, has been successfully applied in the field of moving force identification (MFI). However, existing MFI CS models often fail to obtain the optimal sparse solutions and frequently underestimate the amplitude of local impact forces. To effectively address this issue, a new CS method is proposed for MFI based on smooth L0 norm constraints and bridge response measurements. Firstly, a smooth function is used to approximate the L0 norm, establishing a noise CS reconstruction model for MFI. The introduction of the smoothing function can locally convexify the original MFI problem and enhance the smoothness and differentiability of the objective function, making the optimization problem easier to solve. Subsequently, the Polak–Ribiere–Polyak formula is adopted to point the descent direction of the new objective function, and the sparse solution is iteratively advanced through the conjugate gradient algorithm. Finally, the applicability and feasibility of the proposed method is confirmed by numerical simulations and vehicle–bridge interaction tests, respectively. The results show that the proposed method can accurately identify moving forces from limited measurements of bridge responses. Compared with existing methods, it can provide more precise sparse solutions with higher robustness to measurement noises, and address the issue of underestimating on the amplitude of local impact forces, which is expected to enhance the performance and in-situ applicability of MFI.