Structural damage identification of a cantilever beam using excitation force level control

Abstract

Most studies in damage identification so far have concentrated on comparing modal parameters of a structure with an open crack with those of an intact structure. In this study, a new damage identification method for beam-like structures with a fatigue crack is proposed, which does not require comparative measurement on an intact structure but several measurements at different level of excitation forces on the cracked structure. The idea comes from the fact that dynamic behavior of a structure with a fatigue crack changes with the level of the excitation force. In other words, a beam with a real fatigue crack would behave as an intact beam at low excitation forces due to the crack closure. The 2nd spatial derivatives of frequency response functions along the longitudinal direction of a beam are used as the sensitive indicator of crack existence. Then, weighting function is employed in the averaging process in frequency domain to account for the modal participation of the differences between the dynamic behavior of beam with a fatigue crack at the low excitation and one at the high excitation. Subsequently, a damage index is defined such that the location and level of the crack may be identified. Finally, it is shown that damage identification method using the proposed damage index is very successful through experiment and finite element analysis. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.