Study of Computational and Experimental Methodologies for Cracks Recognition of Vibrating Systems using Modal Parameters

Abstract

Mostly the structural members and machine elements are subjected to progressive static and dynamic loading and that may cause initiation of defects in the form of crack. The cause of damage may be due to the normal operation, accidents or severe natural calamities such as earthquake or storm. That may lead to catastrophic failure or collapse of the structures. Thereby the importance of identification of damage in the structures is not only for leading safe operation but also to prevent the loss of economy and lives. The condition monitoring of the engineering systems is attracted by the researchers and scientists very much to invent the automated fault diagnosis mechanism using the change in vibration response before and after damage. The structural steel is widely used in various engineering systems such as bridges, railway coaches, ships, automobiles, etc. The glass fiber reinforced epoxy layered composite material has become popular for constructing the various engineering structures due to its valuable characteristics such as higher stiffness and strength to weight ratio, better damage tolerance capacity and wear resistance. Therefore, layered composite and structural steel have been taken into account in the current study. The theoretical analysis has been performed to measure the vibration signatures (Natural Frequencies and Mode Shapes) of multiple cracked composite and structural steel. The presence of the crack in structures generates an additional flexibility. That is evaluated by strain energy release rate given by linear fracture mechanics. The additional flexibility alters the dynamic signatures of cracked beam. The local stiffness matrix has been calculated by the inverse of local dimensionless compliance matrix. The finite element analysis has been carried out to measure the vibration signatures of cracked cantilever beam using commercially available finite element software package ANSYS. It is observed from the current analysis, the various factors such as the orientation of cracks, number and position of the cracks affect the performance and effectiveness of damage detection techniques. The various automated artificial intelligent (AI) techniques such as fuzzy controller, neural network and hybrid AI techniques based multiple faults diagnosis systems are developed using vibration response of cracked cantilever beams. The experiments have been conducted to verify the performance and accuracy of proposed methods. A good agreement is observed between the results.