Crack detection in beams using kurtosis

A new technique for crack detection in beam structures based on kurtosis is presented. The fundamental vibration mode of the cracked cantilever beam is analyzed and both the location and size of the crack are estimated. The location of the crack is determined by the abrupt changes in the spatial variation of the analyzed response, while the size of the crack is related to the estimate of kurtosis. The proposed prediction method was validated by experiments on cracked Plexiglas beams. The influence of added noise on the estimation accuracy of the method has been investigated. Compared to existing methods for crack detection, the proposed kurtosis-based prediction scheme is attractive due to low computational complexity and inherent robustness against noise.