Monitoring structural damage of components using an effective modulus approach

This paper describes a novel nondestructive damage detection method that was developed to study the influence of a crack on the dynamic properties of a cantilever beam subjected to bending. Experimental measurements of transfer functions for the cracked cantilever beam revealed a change in the natural frequency with increasing crack length. A finite element model of a cracked element was created to compute the influence of severity and location of damage on the structural stiffness. The proposed model is based on the response of the cracked beam element under a static load. The change in beam deflection as a result of the crack is used to calculate the reduction in the global component stiffness. The reduction of the beam stiffness is then used to determine its dynamic response employing a modal analysis computational model. Euler–Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories are used to quantify the elastic stiffness matrix of a finite element. The transfer functions from both theories compare well with the experimental results. The experimental and computational natural frequencies decreased with increasing crack length. Furthermore the Euler–Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories resulted in approximately the same decrease in the natural frequency with increasing crack length as experimentally measured.