Study of plate vibrating in fluids having part-through crack at random angles and locations

This study presents the vibration characteristics of plate with part-through crack at random angles and locations in fluid. An experimental setup was designed and a series of tests were performed for plates submerged in fluid having cracks at selected angles and locations. However, it was not possible to study these characteristics for all possible crack angles and crack locations throughout the plate dimensions at any fluid level. Therefore, an analytical study is also carried out for plate having horizontal cracks submerged in fluid by adding the influence of crack angle and crack location. The effect of crack angle is incorporated into plate equation by adding bending and twisting moments, and in-plane forces that are applied due to antisymmetric loading, while the influence of crack location is also added in terms of compliance coefficients. Galerkin’s method is applied to get time dependent modal coordinate system. The method of multiple scales is used to find the frequency response and peak amplitude of submerged cracked plate. The analytical model is validated from literature for the horizontally cracked plate submerged in fluid as according to the best of the authors’ knowledge, literature lacks in results for plate with crack at random angle and location in the presence of fluid following validation with experimental results. The combined effect of crack angle, crack location and fluid on the natural frequencies and peak amplitude are investigated in detail. Phenomenon of bending hardening or softening is also observed for different boundary conditions using nonlinear frequency response curves.