Application of ACO for pavements

Hi all.

Of late I have been working on my algorithm called GenACO with Prof. K. Sudhakar Reddy. I thought I should give you an insight into it.

Basically our aim is to determine the pavement layer modulus values and thickness values of the pavements using a back calculation approach using ACO. We know deflections of the pavement from a standard Falling Weight Deflectometer(FWD). We now need to calculate the pavement details so as to determine is life period of the pavement.

Here is a brief flowchart of the algorithm:

(Click on the thumbnail to enlarge)

We have been successful to complete this algorithm for three layers, for which it takes a time of approx 3 minutes. This accounts for every 1 sec sleep whenever the function for calculating the deflections is called. This is because I have to rewrite a file again and again whenever I need to find the deflections for a particular combination of the modulus values and thicknesses. If you happen to know how to send parameters directly to an executable file from Java or C++ or any other language, then please lemme know. It would be greatful to you forever.

Right now, we are working to extend this result for a pavement system of five layers. Though the result obtained for three layers is worth publishing (Right now under draft). I just believe there might be a catch in the algo here that will help us to achieve our goal for pavement systems more than 3 layers.

More on this later,

Shrey Modi.