A crack identification method for beam type structures subject to moving vehicle using particle swarm optimization

Abstract

In this work a crack identification method for beam type structures under moving vehicle is proposed. The basic of the method is to formulate damage detection as an inverse problem, and solve for damage locations and extents. To this end, an objective function is defined based on the difference of damaged beam dynamic response and the response calculated by the mathematical model of the beam. The optimization problem is solved through a popular evolutionary algorithm, i.e. the particle swarm optimization (PSO) with constriction factor, to obtain crack locations and depths. From the numerical simulations it was observed that cracks with depth ratio of 0.1 can be identified with reasonable error by the present method in spite of noise interference and distortive effect of road surface roughness.