Nondestructive Evaluation of Damage in Beams Using Displacement Curvature

In this paper, the capabilities of displacement curvature derived from static response data for finding the location and severity of damage in Euler-Bernoulli beams are assessed. Static response of a beam is obtained using the finite element modeling. In order to reduce the number of measured nodal displacements, the beam deflection is fitted through a polynomial function using a limited number of nodal displacements. An indicator based on displacement curvature obtained for healthy and damaged structure is utilized to identify the damage. The influence of many parameters may affect the efficiency of the method such as the number of elements, the value and location of applied load as well as noise effect is investigated. Two test examples including a simply supported and a cantilever beam are considered. Numerical results show that using the method, the locations of single and multiple damage cases having different characteristics can be well determined.