Identification of Crack Damage in Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Mode Shape Based Methods

Abstract

In recent years, considerable research has been carried out on the use of mode shape based methods to detect structural damage in various types of structures. Damage is identified by comparing the typical dynamic properties of the damage and undamaged structure. In this paper, Modal Flexibility Method and Modal Curvature Method are used to detect crack damage in finite element models of reinforced concrete beams. In order to verify the suitability for implementing algorithms, eigen value analyses are carried out on finite element models of Reinforced Concrete beam and the eigen vectors for different damage cases are extracted. The crack damage is simulated using discontinuing element model method. It is observed that these methods effectively detected the existence of damage and also are able to locate the position of damage for single and multiple damage scenarios for beams.

Keywords: crack damage; modal curvature; modal flexibility; reinforced concrete beam