Vibration Analysis of Beam With Varying Crack Location

The importance of the beam and its engineering applications is obvious, and it undergoes different kinds of loading. Such loading may cause cracks in the beam. Crack depth and location are the main parameters for the vibration analysis of such beams. These cracks and their locations effect on the shapes and values of the beam frequency. So it becomes very important to monitor the changes in the response parameters of the beam to access structural integrity, performance and safety. In the current work, the natural frequency of a simply supported beam with a triangular crack, is investigated numerically by finite element method using of FE analysis software ANSYS. Different crack location effects are considered and the results are compared with that of the simply supported beam without crack. The results obtained from the vibration analysis of the beam show that the lowest fundamental frequency of the beam without crack is higher than the lowest frequency obtained for beam with cracks. When the location of the crack varies from the either end of the simply supported beam to the centre of the beam the lowest natural frequency decreases. Keywords— Vibration Analysis, ANSYS, Beam, Crack, natural frequency