Identifying cracks in the incipient state is essential to prevent the failure of engineering structures. Detection methods relying on the analysis of the changes in modal parameters are widely used because of the advantages they present. In our previous research, we found that eigenfrequencies were capable of indicating the position and depth of damage when sufficient vibration modes were considered. The damage indicator we developed was based on the relative frequency shifts (RFS). To calculate the RFSs for various positions and depths of a crack, we established a mathematical relation that involved the squared modal curvatures in the healthy state and the deflection of the healthy and damaged beam under dead mass, respectively. In this study, we propose to calculate the RFS for beams with several cracks by applying the superposition principle. We demonstrate that this is possible if the cracks are far enough from each other. In fact, if the cracks are close to each other, the superposition method does not work and we distinguish two cases: (i) when the cracks affect the same beam face, the frequency drop is less than the sum of the individual frequency drops, and (ii) on the contrary, cracks on opposite sides cause a decrease in frequency, which is greater than the sum of the frequency drop due to individual damage. When the RFS curves are known, crack assessment becomes an optimization problem, the cost function being the distance between the measured RFSs and all possible RFSs for several vibration modes. Thus, the RFS constitutes a benchmark that characterizes damage using only the eigenfrequencies. We can accurately locate multiple cracks and estimate their severity through experiments and thus prove the reliability of the proposed method.

Evaluating the integrity of structures is an important issue in engineering applications. The use of vibration-based techniques has become a common approach to assessing cracks, which are the most frequently occurring damage in structures. When involving an inverse method, it is necessary to know the influence of the position and the geometry of the crack on the modal parameter changes. The geometry of the crack, both in size and shape, defines the damage severity (DS). In this study, we present a method (DS-SHC) used for estimating the DS for closed and open transverse cracks in beam-like structures using the intact and damaged beam deflections under its weight and a Stochastic Hill Climbing (SHC) algorithm. After describing the procedure of applying DS-SHC, we calculate for a prismatic cantilever beam the severities for different crack types and depths. The results are tested by comparing the DS obtained with DS-SHC with those acquired from dynamic tests made using professional simulation software. We obtained a good fit between the severities determined in these two ways. Subsequently, we performed laboratory experiments and found that the severities obtained with the DS-SHC method can accurately predict the frequency changes due to the crack. Hence, these severities are a valuable tool for damage detection.

This paper presents a method to find the severity of a crack for cantilever beams that can be used to estimate the frequency drop due to the crack. The severity is found for the crack located at the location where the biggest curvature (or bending moment) is achieved. Because the fixing condition does not permit a symmetrical deformation around the crack, the apparent severity is smaller as the real one. The latter is found by the estimated value of the trend-line at the fixed end, it being constructed on points that consider the crack position (equidistant points in the proximity of the fixed end) and the resulted deflections.

During functioning time, structures such as beams are subjected to a variety of loads caused by the working conditions and environment, which can lead to the development of cracks. The current research is concerned with detecting the presence and location of two transverse breathing cracks, in cantilever beams. Starting from the known fact that damages produce a stiffness degradation in structures altering their dynamic parameters, we performed modal simulations of damaged beams to determine their natural frequencies. By using the simulation data, we trained an artificial neural network (ANN), using the feedforward backpropagation algorithm, that is capable to detect the presence of the cracks, their position and for the case when the damages are in proximity, the model can determine if the cracks occur on the same face or opposite faces.

This paper proposes an analytic relation for the deflection of a cantilever beam with a transverse crack subjected to dead load. The mathematical relation is deduced involving the decreased capacity of the beam to store energy, which is in direct relation with the crack position and depth. Eventually, the validity of the relation is proved by means of the finite element method.