Hybrid optimization algorithm for estimating soil parameters of spoil hopper deposition model for trailing suction hopper dredgers

Abstract

Trailing suction hopper dredger is a kind of hydraulic dredger, it has the characteristics of self-propelled, selfloading, self-dredging, self-unloading, it is the main force in dredging and blowing works, it is widely used in the world, it can be said that where there is a big dredging project where there is a trailing suction hopper dredger’s figure. The loading optimization process of trailing suction hopper dredger contains a lot of dredging parameters related to soil type, and the soil type under different working conditions is not very clear. In this study, we present a hybrid optimization technique based on simulated annealing and multi-population genetic algorithm to enhance the loading efficiency of a trailing suction hopper dredger and to examine the variation of dredged soil parameters. The soil parameters of the spoil hopper deposition model were estimated using this hybrid optimization algorithm. The experimental results show that the soil parameters are successfully estimated and verified by our measured construction data of a trailing suction hopper dredger. In addition, our proposed method has the highest accuracy of soil parameter estimation, the fastest algorithm convergence, and excellent robustness compared to the other three intelligent optimization methods. In addition, our method successfully avoids the phenomenon of premature convergence that usually occurs in traditional genetic algorithms, and the parameters show strong adaptability to different vessels under the same dredging area.