Modeling and Simulation of a Cracked Beam with Different Location Using FEM

Abstract

Nowadays presence of crack in different engineering structures becomes a serious threat to the performance. Since most of the civil and mechanical structures may be damaged due to material fatigue, mechanical vibration, environmental attack and long-term service. Moreover, dynamical systems of a beam usually possess a non-linear character, which causes practical difficulties on the model-based damage detection techniques. This paper presents a novel approach to detect damage in a simply supported beam. In this study, a numerical simulation using the Finite Element Method (FEM) has been done to determine the frequencies to detect the crack in a concrete beam of length 0.12 m and width 0.015 m. A vibration-based model is employed to simulate the results by using COMSOL Multiphysics. At the tip, by performing the computational analysis it is found that the presence of cracks affects the natural frequencies of the concrete structure. It is observed that after applying load, the frequencies of the cracked beam have been changed with the variation of the location of the crack for all the modes of vibration. It also found that maximum frequency reserved at the cracked point so it will also help us to detect different hidden defects in any structure. A comparison is also made with the experimental results. It is also found that the effect of crack is more near the fixed end than at the free end.