Identification of crack in beams under moving forces using Hilbert-Huang transform

This article identifies crack in beams under moving forces (a moving load, a moving mass, a moving oscillator and a four degree of freedom moving system) using the Hilbert Huang transform. Timely identification and repair of damage in structures (such as cracks in bridge decks), especially in those structures that are always under dynamic loads, is very important. In recent years, new methods have been proposed based on the recorded dynamic responses of the structure. most of these methods are based on developed model updating methods which are usually very costly computationally. To overcome this problem, this study presents a method based on the Hilbert-Huang transform. In this method, the bridge is modeled in the form of an Euler-Bernoulli beam and the vehicle is also modeled in different conditions as a moving load, a moving mass, a moving oscillator and a moving system. The results show that the proposed method is able to detect cracks in bridge decks with an acceptable accuracy in all cases.