Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
771339 | Engineering Fracture Mechanics | 2007 | 10 Pages |
The stationary vibrations of a beam excited by Gaussian noise are strongly affected by the presence of a fatigue crack. Indeed, as soon as the crack arises the system response becomes non-linear due to crack breathing and a non-Gaussian behaviour is encountered. The paper presents both numerical and experimental investigations in order to assess the capability of the non-Gaussianity measures to detect crack presence and position. Monte Carlo method is applied to evaluate in time domain the higher order statistics of a cantilever beam modelled by finite elements. The skewness coefficient of the rotational degrees of freedom appears the most suitable quantity for identification purpose being very sensitive to the non-linear behaviour of the cracked beam.