Abstract
This paper presents a method for analysis of steady-state vibration of a beam with breathing cracks, which open and close during vibration. There are several papers treating problems of vibration analysis of a beam with breathing cracks. However, due to their treatments of the condition which determines the switch between the open and closed states of the crack, it is difficult for one to obtain steady-state vibration efficiently by methods such as the incremental harmonic balance method. Since opening and closing of a breathing crack depends on the sign of the bending moment, or the curvature, of the beam, the key point to this problem is explicit treatment of the bending moment. The mixed variational principle allows one to use deflection as well as bending moment as primary variables in the governing equation. In this paper a governing equation of a beam with breathing cracks is derived by a finite element procedure based on the mixed variational principle. Then, the derived governing equations are solved by combining the iteration method and the harmonic balance method. Finally, examples of analysis by the presented method are given.
