A two-step approach for crack detection in beam structures is presented. As a first
step, a number of proper orthogonal modes (POMs) of a beam are extracted, using
proper orthogonal decomposition, a powerful and elegant method (closely related to
principal component analysis) aimed at obtaining low-dimensional approximations of
high-dimensional processes, taking into account nonlinearities and minimizing noise
effects.
Then, alternatively to other approaches, morphological processing is proposed for
the further processing of the POMs. The basic concept of morphological
processing is to modify the shape of an object by transforming it through its
interaction with another object, called the structuring element. Using an
appropriate morphological processing procedure, the position and the depth
of the cracks can be estimated by isolating the sudden local change effect
of the cracks on the spatial variation of the shape of each POM. For this
purpose, the four basic morphological operators (dilation, erosion, opening,
closing) are compared, using two different types of structuring elements. The
erosion operator with a spline structuring element is shown to present the best
results.
Finally, the performance of the method is assessed on different beam structures
affected by breathing cracks, with respect to the influence of several factors, such as
boundary conditions, crack location, crack depth, crack distance, measurement noise
level and space resolution of measurement points. In all cases, the method presents a
robust behavior.