Prediction of crack depth and position in vibrating beams using artificial neural networks

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a finite element procedure for crack prediction in vibrating beams. Based on this procedure, full frictional contact conditions are introduced between the crack surfaces in order to consider the breathing of crack. The region surrounding the crack is simulated by two-dimensional finite elements. An incremental-iterative procedure is employed to solve the nonlinear dynamic equations governing this problem. The obtained time response is processed with Fast Fourier Transform to extract its frequency components. The first three natural frequencies are input to a trained Artificial Neural Network for depth and position prediction of the crack. This study is validated for a dynamic loading cantilever beam. It is found that the proposed procedure is capable of predicting the crack depth and position with high accuracy.

Keywords

• artificial neural networks
• finite element method
• crack prediction
• contact conditions