Final Report of Finite Element Analysis of Cracked Composite Beams

International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)
Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050
FINAL REPORT OF FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF CRACKED

COMPOSITE BEAMS
1GYADARI
RAMESH, 2Dr.VVRLS.GANGADHAR, 3SAZEED AHMED

1HOD, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Princeton College of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad
2Principal, Princeton College of Engineering & Technology, Hyderabad
3Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Princeton College of Engineering & Technology,
Hyderabad
ABSTRACT
High speed machinery and light weight structures require
high strength-to-weight ratios. For this reason, in recent
years, the use of anisotropic reinforced composites,
where strength-to-weight ratios is very high, has
increased substantially in the fields of mechanical
engineering. Cracks occurring in structural elements are
responsible for local stiffness variations, which in
consequence affect their dynamic characteristics. In this
thesis finite element analysis is done on a beam to
investigate the deformations, stresses and frequencies
without and with a crack metals and for composite
materials. The materials considered for investigation are
metals Aluminum alloy 7475 and Stainless Steel,
Composite materials Kevlar, Carbon Fiber and High
Strength Carbon FiberStatic, and Modal analyses is done
for the beam like structures without and with cracks.
Analysis is done in ANSYS.
1. INTRODUCTION
Beams have been used since dim antiquity to support
loads over empty space, as roof beams supported by thick
columns, or as bridges thrown across water, for example.
The Egyptians invented the colonnaded building that was
the inspiration for the classic Greek temple. Even with
the scarcity of timber in Egypt, wooden beams supported
the roofs. Early bridges were beams supported at each
end by the stream banks, or on piles, on which a deck
was constructed for traffic. In either case, the trunk of a
tree was the usual beam, trimmed and either left round or
squared. Our word "beam" is, in fact, cognate with
German Baum or Dutch boom. A tree makes a very
satisfactory beam, indeed, and practically all beams were
originally timber beams. Stone beams, as in door lintels,
could be used only for very short spans and light loads,
because of the brittleness of stone. Brittle materials do
not make good beams.
Through the millennia, beams were designed by
empirical methods, applicable only to specific cases and
incapable of generalization. Galileo studied beams, and
although he did not get it quite right, he showed how the
subject should be approached. The theory of beams was
only perfected in the late 17th century with the rise of the
science of elasticity, and was shown to be a subject of
great complexity for which a full and accurate solution

was very difficult. This remains true even with modern
computational methods, such as the method of finite
elements, which produces only numbers (not designs) but
very little insight, and depends on parameters that are not
well known and models that may contain errors. These
methods have great value, but are not a comprehensive
solution.
The theory of beams shows remarkably well the power of
the approximate methods called "strength of materials
methods." These methods depend on the use of statics,
superposition and simplifying assumptions that turn out
to be very close to the truth. They give approximate, not
exact, results that are usually more than adequate for
engineering work. Calculus and a little differential
equations are all the mathematics required for this
approach, not the partial differential equations or tensor
analysis that are typical tools in elasticity.
Strength of materials methods can be used for beams of
arbitrary cross sections, for beams whose shape varies
along the length, for loads applied in any direction at any
point, distributed or concentrated. Many of these
applications are discussed in the first reference, which
shows the versatility of the method. The results obtained
are fully adequate for engineering design. On the other
hand, an accurate and rigorous quantitative solution in
these varied cases would be extremely difficult and
usually impossible.
An introduction to many of the concepts that will be
needed here will be found in Elasticity, including the
meaning of shear and bending moments, and shear and
moment diagrams.
Pure Bending
A beam is in pure uniform bending when the shear stress
in the beam is zero, and the bending moment is constant.
It is not very easy to achieve this state in practice.
Opposite couples of moment M applied to the ends of a
uniform beam creates pure bending, and there must be no
transverse loads. If the ends of a beam are joined by a
cord in tension, as in an archery bow, the beam is in pure
bending with a superimposed axial compression. In the
strength of materials picture, we would consider this as
the superposition of uniform bending and uniform
compression, which would be treated separately. Let us
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assume here that a beam under consideration has a cross

section symmetrical with respect to a plane that is normal
to the bending moment. Deflections will be in this plane,
and we will establish x and y axes such that the x-axis is
along the beam, and y is either upwards or downwards.
Usually, y is taken positive downwards, and then the
positive z-axis is into the plane, and a positive moment is
clockwise.
2. INTRODUCTION TO CRACKS
Engineering structures are designed to withstand
the loads they are expected to be subject to while in
service. Among them Beams are a standout amongst the
most usually utilized structural components within
various structural elements in numerous engineering
applications and experience a wide mixed bag of static
and element loads. Beams are widely used as structural
components in engineering applications and also provide
a fundamental model for many engineering applications.
Aircraft wings, helicopter rotor blades, spacecraft
antennae, and robot arms are all examples of structures
that may be modeled with beam-like elements. Beam sort
structures are being generally utilized in steel shaped
structure and manufacturing of machines.
Beams with variable cross-section and/or material
properties are frequently used in aeronautical engineering
(e.g., rotor shafts and functionally graded beams),
mechanical engineering (e.g., robot arms and crane
booms), and civil engineering (e.g., beams, columns, and
steel composite floor slabs in the single direction loading
case). Stepped beam-like structures are widely used in
various engineering fields, such as robot arm and tall
building, etc.
Therefore there is a necessary that construction
should securely work during its service period. But,
wreck initiates a failure span on structure. The instant
changes introduced into a structure, either intentionally
or unintentionally which leads to adverse effect the
current or future performance of that structure is defined
as damage. Damage is one of the important aspects in
structural analysis because of safety reason as well as
economic growth of the industries. The general structural
defect is the existence of cracks and is among usual
encountered defects in the structures. Cracks are present
in structures due to numerous reasons.
It is well known that the cracks appearing in a
structure yield an increase of the vibrational level, result
in the reduction of their load carrying capacity, and can
constitute the cause of catastrophic failures. Vibration
measurements offer a non-destructive, inexpensive and
fast means to detect and locate cracks. The crack
detection has importance for structural health monitoring
applications because fracture in a structure can be
harmful because static dynamic loadings. The SHM
process involves the observation of a system over time
using periodically sampled dynamic response
measurements from an array of sensors, the extraction of

damage-sensitive features from these measurements, and
the statistical analysis of these features to determine the
current state of system health.In the last two decades a lot
of research effort has been devoted to developing an
effective method of approach for crack detection in
structures. Early crack detection plays a very important
role for ensuring safety and reliability of in-service
structures. For the reason of veracity and testability, the
changes in natural frequencies of the structure before and
after damage are often used to indicate the state of the
structure. A lot of research efforts have been devoted to
developing an effective approach for crack detection in
structures.
Numerous courses guide with the structural guarding of
beams, especially, fracture found by structural health
monitoring. Course related subjected on structural health
monitoring for fracture detection gives a idea about
change in frequencies occurred naturally and mode
pattern of the beam. A Vibrational analysis generally
used to find defects on structure like fracture, of any
structure offer an effective, inexpensive and fast means
of non-destructive testing.The presence of a crack or
localized damage in a structure reduces the stiffness and
increases the damping in the structure. Vibration theory
states, reduction in the stiffness is associated with
decrease in the natural frequencies and modification of
the modes of vibration of the structure. Fractures or other
blotch in a structural component influence its dynamic
loading and change its stiffness and damping properties.
Consequently, the frequency occurred naturally and
mode shape of the structure with data about the position
and measurement of the defect. Local flexibilities are
existing because the presence of fracture in the structure
which harms the behavior of the entire structure
dynamically to an amountable degree. It leads to decrease
in frequencies occurred naturally and changes in mode
patterns of vibrations. Any detection of these differences
makes likely to detect fractures.
Fatigue and crack initiation and propagation in
structures and machinery subjected to dynamic loading
are one of the main concerns of designers and users. An
uncontrolled crack can lead to a catastrophic failure
under certain conditions. The importance of early
detection of cracks makes researchers study various
aspects of the behavior of structures defected by cracks.
One of these aspects is the vibration of cracked
structures. Crack creation and development in a system
changes the dynamic and vibration behavior of that
system. With measurement and analysis of these
vibrations, the cracks can be identi_ed well in advance
and appropriate actions can be taken to prevent more
damage to the system.
Fracture Mechanics as we know it, was
originated by Wieghardt and Inglis. Both independently
showed that cavities and flaws in continuum materials act
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as stress concentrators which, in the limit of sharp edges

(cracks), produce infinite stress at the tip. A fairly
thorough description of the approaches for solving the
crack problems is made by many researchers. These were
the first attempts to bring closer the theories of fracture
mechanics (FM) and continuum mechanics (CM). About
the same time, the Finite Element Method (FEM) and
digital computers dashed into the engineering community
as a gifted means for quantifying solutions in structural
and solid mechanics. Naturally, fracture mechanic
researchers implemented their FE methods, while
continuum mechanic researchers implemented theirs.
The vibration behavior of cracked structures has
been investigated by many researchers. Dimaragonas
presented a review on the topic of the vibration of
cracked structures. His review contains vibration of
cracked rotors, bars, beams, plates, pipes, blades and
shells. Two more literature reviews are also available on
the dynamic behavior of cracked rotors by Wauer and
Gasch.
There exist three methods for the vibration
modeling of beams with horizontal transverse 3.1
cracks:
1. Discrete models with a local exibility model for
cracks.
2. Continuous models with a local exibility model for
cracks.
3. Continuous models with a continuous model for the
crack.
The local exibility model for the crack has been
suggested by Dimaragonas for the first time . He replaced
the cracked beam with two undamaged half beams
connected by a rotational spring. The stiffness of this
spring is obtained from the concept of the J-integral in
fracture mechanics. Papadopoulos presented a complete
literature review on the method of using the J-integral for
finding the local exibility of a Vibration Theory for
Beams with Vertical Edge Crack 195 cracks. The local
exibility idea has been followed by several researchers
till now. Some researchers modeled two undamaged half
beams discretely and added the exibility of the rotational
spring to the exibility matrix of the system. Others
modeled two undamaged half beams continuously and
used appropriate boundary conditions for each part to
link them through the rotational spring . Some other
researchers have tried to modify and improve the local
exibility model of the crack by adding one or two linear
springs besides the rotational one. These methods have
also been extended for beams with more than one crack.
The local exibility model for the crack is a simple
approach and has a relatively good result in finding the
fundamental natural frequency of a cracked beam.
However, this method cannot be implemented for finding
stress at the crack area under dynamic loads, mode
shapes in free vibrations and operational deformed
shapes in forced vibrations.
Another approach to the vibration analysis of

cracked beams is continuous modeling of the crack.
Christides and Barr developed a continuous theory for
the vibration of a uniform Euler-Bernoulli beam
containing one or more pairs of symmetric cracks. They
suggested some modifications on the familiar stress field
of an undamaged Euler-Bernoulli beam in order to
consider the crack ect. The differential equation of
motion and corresponding boundary conditions are given
as the results. However, in their model, two different and
incompatible assumptions have been made for
displacement and strain fields. Although the accuracy of
the results in finding the natural frequencies is acceptable
for some applications, their model is still not reliable for
more accurate analyses such as stress analysis near the
crack tip under dynamic loading and mode shape
analysis. In addition, the obtained partial differential
equation is complicated and dependent on some constants
that are unknown and must be calculated by correlating
the analytically obtained results with those calculated by
fnite element in each case. Several researchers followed
the Christides and Barr approach by modifying their
method and gained some improvements. However, there
still exists the inconsistency between strain and
displacement fields, which causes inaccuracy in the result
In numerous engineering applications beams are
universally used structural elements which experience a
wide variety of static and dynamic loads. During their
utilisation various engineering structures subjected to
degenerative effects, all these are responsible for the
development of cracks. The propagation of these cracks
decreases the stiffness of an element and sometimes leads
to the failure of the complete structure. Immediate
detection of these cracks is an important task of an
engineer to determine the effect of crack on stiffness on
the beam, all these beams or shafts subjected to these
conditions are modelled using either Timoshenko beam
or Euler-Bernoulli theories. The characteristic equation
involving natural frequency, the crack depth and crack
location and other properties of the beam are derived
using conventional methods like boundary conditions of
the beam along with the stress intensity factors. The
change in dynamic characteristics of multiple cracked
stepped beams with varying cross sections using FEM.
This problem has been a subject of many papers, but only
a few papers have been devoted to the changes in the
dynamic characteristics of multiple cracked stepped
beams with varying cross sections using FEM.
In homogeneous material systems, damage almost always
involves cracks. From dynamics and fracture mechanics,
it is well known that accelerated crack nucleation and
micro-crack formation in components can occur due to
various reasons, such as transient load swings, higher
than expected intermittent loads, or defective component
materials. Normal wear causes configuration changes that
contribute to dynamic loading conditions that can cause
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micro-crack formation at material grain boundaries in

stress concentrated regions (acute changes in material
geometry).
Structural systems may be composed of homogeneous or
heterogeneous materials such as composites, plastics,
ceramics, fabrics and metal-alloys.
Heterogeneous structures have complicated dynamics of
their own in addition to numerous types of damage and
failure modes (crack growth, delaminations, fiber
breakage, matrix cracking, component failures), which
interact in complicated ways that vary tremendously for
different initial states, levels of damage accumulation and
loading history, making it very difficult to forecast their
remaining useful life in operation.
Though there have been abundant, relatively successful
efforts to model and predict specific types of failure in
complex material and structural systems, this work is
directed towards the investigation of a more universal
approach time-domain technique can accommodate the
diversity of failure modes exhibited by structures.
This work is mainly concerned about time domain plots
for various types of damages in composite as well as
homogeneous materials.
Structural analysis is probably the most common

application of the finite element method as it implies
bridges and buildings, naval, aeronautical, and
mechanical structures such as ship hulls, aircraft bodies,
and machine housings, as well as mechanical
components such as pistons, machine parts, and tools.
Static Analysis - Used to determine
displacements, stresses, etc. under static loading
conditions. ANSYS can compute both linear and
nonlinear static analyses. Nonlinearities can
include plasticity, stress stiffening, large
deflection, large strain, hyper elasticity, contact
surfaces, and creep.
Transient Dynamic Analysis - Used to determine
the response of a structure to arbitrarily timevarying loads. All nonlinearities mentioned
under Static Analysis above are allowed.
Buckling Analysis - Used to calculate the
buckling loads and determine the buckling mode
shape.
3. MATERIAL PROPERTIES
Aluminum
Stainless
Alloy 7475
Steel
Kevlar
High
Carbon
Strength
fiber
carbon
Youngs
71700
195000
42000
230000
240000
0.33
0.29
0.2
0.27
0.25
2.81
1.44
1.44
1.8
Modulus(MPa)
Poissons
RATIO
DENSITY(g/cc)
4. RESULTS
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF BEAM WITHOUT
CRACK
Select geometry right click import geometry

select browse open part ok
select mesh on work bench right click edit
ALUMINUM ALLOY 7475

Ansys workbench select analysis system
static structural double click
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Strain
STAINLESS STEEL
Mode 1
Total deformation
Stress
Mode 2
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Mode 3
Mode 5
Mode 4
5. RESULTS TABLE
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
ALUMINUM
STAINLESS
ALLOY 7475
STEEL
KEVLAR
HIGH
CARBON
STRENGTH
FIBER
CARBON
1.186
7.8003
36.285
6.6169
6.3442
Stress (N/mm2)
88.464
88.674
88.881
88.751
88.81
Strain
0.0012418
0.00045776
0.0021308
0.00038847
0.00037205
Displacement
(mm)
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MODAL ANALYSIS
ALUMINUM
STAINLESS
ALLOY 7475
STEEL
KEVLAR
HIGH
CARBON
STRENGTH
FIBER
CARBON
Mode1
Mode 2
Mode 3
Mode 4
Mode 5
Frequency (Hz)
16.164
15.793
17.267
36.772
36.927
Deflection (mm)
56.836
33.681
79.372
72.216
70.991
Frequency (Hz)
17.232
16.831
18.393
39.184
39.344
Deflection (mm)
56.903
33.721
79.471
72.303
71.086
Frequency (Hz)
102.15
99.801
109.1
232.37
233.34
Deflection (mm)
56.644
33.568
79.113
71.975
70.763
Frequency (Hz)
112.24
109.65
119.87
255.33
256.37
Deflection (mm)
56.02
33.224
78.289
71.235
70.033
Frequency (Hz)
282.75
276.82
302.12
343.31
646.04
Deflection (mm)
56.487
33.476
78.905
71.78
70.573
6. CONCLUSIONS
In this thesis finite element analysis is done on a beam to
investigate the deformations, stresses and frequencies
without and with a crack metals and for composite
materials. The materials considered for investigation are
metals Aluminum alloy 7475 and Stainless Steel,
Composite materials Kevlar, Carbon Fiber and High
Strength Carbon Fiber.Static, and Modal analyses is done
for the beam like structures without and with cracks.
Analysis is done in ANSYS.By observing the static
analysis results, the stresses are increasing for beam with
crack. The stresses are increasing almost by 14% for
aluminum alloy 7475, almost by 17.32% for Stainless
Steel, almost by 19% for Kevlar, almost by 17.75% for
High Strength Carbon Fiber and almost by 18.14% for
Carbon Fiber.By observing the modal analysis results,
the frequencies are not much varied for beams with
crack.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
REFERENCES
1. Vibration
of
cracked
beams
by N.
Papaeconomou, A. Dimarogonas, Computational
Mechanics 1989, Volume 5, Issue 2-3, pp 88-94
2. Vibration of a Cracked Cantilever Beam by T. G.
Chondros and A. D. Dimarogonas, J. Vib.
Acoust 120(3), 742-746 (Jul 01, 1998),
doi:10.1115/1.2893892
3. Identification of an Open Crack Model
Parameters in Cracked Beams by N. Dharmaraju,
9.
R. Tiwari and S. Talukdar, Journal of Vibration

Engineering & Technologies, 2006, Vol 5(4)
Vibration Analysis of Cracked Stepped
Laminated Composite Beams by Stephen R.
Borneman, Seyed M. Hashemi, Hekmat
Alighanbari, International Journal of Vehicle
Structures & Systems, Vol 1, No 1-3 (2009)
Analyzing Some Behavior of a Cracked Beam
under Pressure by B. Yazdizadeh, International
Journal of Science and Technology, ISSN 22243577
C. Inglis, Stress in a Plate Due to the Presence of
Cracks and Sharp Corners, ProcInt Naval
Architects.
D. Antonio Caballero Mesh Scalability in Direct
Finite Element Simulation of Brittle Fracture,
Engineering Fracture Mechanics, 75 (14),
(2008), 18.
N. Sneddon and M. Lowengrub, Crack Problems
in the Classical Theory of Elasticity, Wiley,
(1969), G. C. Sih, Handbook of Stress Intensity
Factors, Lehigh University Press, (1973)
M. P. Savruk, Two-Dimensional Problems of
Elasticity for Body with Crack, Journal, (1981)
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International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Engineering (IJETE)

Volume 2 Issue 9, September 2015, ISSN 2348 8050