Single beam analysis of damaged beams verified using a strain energy based damage measure

Analytical expression of a new damage measure which relates the strain energy, to the damage location and magnitude, is presented in this paper. The strain energy expression is calculated using modes and natural frequencies of damaged beams that are derived based on single beam analysis considering both decrease in mass and stiffness. Decrease in mass and stiffness are a fallout of geometric discontinuity and no assumptions regarding the physical behavior of damage are made. The method is applicable to beams, with notch like non-propagating cracks, with arbitrary boundary conditions. The analytical expressions derived for mode shapes, curvature shapes, natural frequencies and an improved strain energy based damage measure, are verified using experiments. The improvement in the damage measure is that it is not assumed that the bending stiffness of the damaged beam is constant, and, equal to that of undamaged beam when calculating the strain energy of the entire beam. It is also not assumed that the bending stiffness of the element in which the damage is located is constant.