An identification problem for vibrating cracked beams

Abstract

An identification procedure to determine the crack characteristics (location and size of the crack) from dynamic measurements is developed and tested. This procedure is based on minimization of either the "mean-square" or the "max" measure of difference between measurement data (natural frequencies and mode shapes) and the corresponding predictions obtained from the computational model. Necessary conditions are obtained for both formulations. The method is tested for simulated damage in the form of one-side or symmetric cracks in a simply supported Bernoulli-Euler beam. The sensitivity of the solution of damage identification to the values of parameters that characterize damage is discussed.