Hybrid Modeling of Flotation Height in Air Flotation Oven Based on Selective Bagging Ensemble Method

The accurate prediction of the flotation height is very necessary for the precise control of the air flotation oven process, therefore, avoiding the scratch and improving production quality. In this paper, a hybrid flotation height prediction model is developed. Firstly, a simplified mechanism model is introduced for capturing the main dynamic behavior of the process. Thereafter, for compensation of the modeling errors existing between actual system and mechanism model, an error compensation model which is established based on the proposed selective bagging ensemble method is proposed for boosting prediction accuracy. In the framework of the selective bagging ensemble method, negative correlation learning and genetic algorithm are imposed on bagging ensemble method for promoting cooperation property between based learners. As a result, a subset of base learners can be selected from the original bagging ensemble for composing a selective bagging ensemble which can outperform the original one in prediction accuracy with a compact ensemble size. Simulation results indicate that the proposed hybrid model has a better prediction performance in flotation height than other algorithms’ performance.