On the application of peridynamics to crack detection in membranes using an upgraded metaheuristic

Abstract

In this paper we present a new approach based on peridynamics (PD) for identification of crack position and length in membranes, as one of the most important topics in structural health monitoring. PD is known to provide rather realistic results in problems involving crack nucleation and propagation and requires no special treatment for consideration of cracks; therefore it is employed in this work for computation of in-plane response of the cracked membranes under impact load conditions. To identify the crack characteristics, the difference between measured and computed maximum displacements of some predetermined points is considered as the objective function. An optimization step, using the Charged System Search (CSS) algorithm, is then used to minimize the objective function. To increase the efficiency of CSS, the algorithm is upgraded using a sinusoidal search phase. To evaluate the proposed approach, four scenarios of crack placement are considered. Noisy conditions are also considered in each scenario. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach in determining the position, orientation, and length of the crack. Also, the upgraded CSS algorithm consistently outperforms the original CSS algorithm. © 2022, Springer Nature B.V.