Dynamic and experimental analysis on response of multi-cracked structures carrying transit mass

This research article presents a computational work followed by experiments to elaborate the response of a multi-cracked beam structures excited by traversed mass. The cracks are located at different positions having different relative crack depths. A fourth-order Runge-Kutta computational method is used here for finding the deflection of the cracked beam. The responses of damaged cantilever beam and fixed-fixed beam are considered in this work. During the traversing of the mass across the damaged structure, the response of the cracked structures has been analysed. The effects of mass, speed, crack severities and crack locations on the response of the structure have also been inspected. Computational work has been carried out with different masses at various speeds for the moving mass. The results obtained from the computational work have been validated with that of experiments and are found to be in good agreement.