Vibration Analysis of Cracked Steel Beams

Abstract

Defects influence in a negative way the service life of structures. Thus, detection of them even at a very small size is a very important point of view to guarantee structural safety and to safe costs. The objective of this study is to analyze the vibration behavior of beams .For this purpose, the vibrations as a result of impact shocks were analyzed. The signals obtained in defect-free and cracked steel beams were compared in the frequency domain. In this paper, an analytical, as well as experimental approach to the crack detection in steel beams by vibration analysis is established. An experimental setup is designed in which a cracked beam is excited by a hammer and the response is obtained using an accelerometer attached to the beam. To avoid non-linearity, it is assumed that the crack is always open.