Numerical and Experimental Verification of a Method for Prognosis of Inclined Edge Crack in Cantilever Beam based on Synthesis of Mode Shapes

A crack in the vibrant structures can lead to premature failure if it is not identified in early stages. The failure rate increases as the crack growth increases due to the structure becomes weaker. Therefore, crack identification and type of crack is a key issue. The existence of cracks which influence the performance of structure as well as the vibration parameters such as; natural frequencies, mode shapes, stiffness and modal damping. Our current investigation is to model an inclined open edge crack in a cantilever beam and analyze the model using a finite element package, as well as experimental approach. A finite element model has been developed in this paper to analyze the variation of modal parameters according to the location, size and inclination of a crack in the cantilever beam having inclined edge crack. The proposed method is based on measured frequencies and mode shapes of the beam. The experiments are also carried out using specimens having inclined edge cracks of different depths, positions and crack inclinations to validate the FEA results achieved.