Abstract
Since long it has been observed that the size of the crack in structures increases with time, and finally, it may lead to its catastrophic failure. Hence, it is crucial to do the vibration study of cracked structures with regard to vibration-based crack detection and the classification of cracks. So far, vibration-based non-destructive testing method is applied to many spring steel cracked cantilever beams for its possible crack detection. However, the effect of various kinds of practical cracks, that is, V-shaped and U-shaped, on the applicability of these methods has been overlooked. To investigate this issue, artificially cracks are made on the cantilever beam. By free vibration analysis, the effect of crack geometry, crack depth, and crack location on natural frequency is investigated. The natural frequency results obtained from V-shaped and U-shaped models for the same crack configurations are compared with each other and it is revealed that the results are not much sensitive for the change of crack geometry. Hence, it is clear that free vibration-based crack detection method approximately predicts the crack parameters, that is, crack location and crack depth, in structures irrespective of the crack geometry. It is also found that for the same configuration, results of natural frequency are comparatively on the lower side for U-shaped crack models than V-shaped crack models. In this study, the natural frequency of each cracked case is computed by a theoretical method and numerical method and shows good agreement. Finally, it is also observed that structural integrity of a cracked cantilever beam is a function of crack location.
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