Natural frequencies of a functionally graded cracked beam using the differential quadrature method

The present work is concerned with the free vibration analysis of an elastically supported cracked beam. The beam is made of a functionally graded material and rested on a Winkler-Pasternak foundation. The line spring model is employed to formulate the problem. The method of differential quadrature is applied to solve it. The obtained results agreed with the previous similar ones. Further, a parametric study is introduced to investigate the effects of the geometric and elastic characteristics of the problem on the values of natural frequencies and mode shape functions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.