Robust damage assessment of multiple cracks based on the frequency response function and the Constitutive Relation Error updating method

The aim of this paper is to present a damage assessment technique for the non-destructive detection and sizing of multiple open cracks ill beams. The constitutive relation error updating method is used for the identification of the location and the size of multi-cracks ill a simply supported beam. The present identification method is illustrated through numerical examples including double and triple cracks. Moreover, the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method is demonstrated through various numerical simulations ill regard to the non-dimensional crack depth and the crack location. It is demonstrated that the constitutive relation error Updating method can detect the number of cracks oil the beam and can estimate both the crack positions and sizes with satisfactory precision, even if 10% or 20% noise levels has been added to the simulations, and only few degrees of freedom are used for the identification procedure. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.