Flexural Vibration and Elastic Buckling of a Cracked Timoshenko Beam Made of Functionally Graded Materials

Free vibration and elastic buckling of beams made of functionally graded materials (FGMs) containing open edge cracks are studied in this paper based on Timoshenko beam theory. The crack is modeled by a massless elastic rotational spring. It is assumed that the material properties follow exponential distributions along beam thickness direction. Analytical solutions of natural frequencies and critical buckling load are obtained for cracked FGM beams with clamped-free, hinged-hinged, and clamped-clamped end supports. A detailed parametric study is conducted to study the influences of crack depth, crack location, total number of cracks, material properties, beam slenderness ratio, and end supports on the free vibration and buckling characteristics of cracked FGM beams.