Tapered structural members such as beams are very important in various engineering applications. Movable arms, towers and antennae are the most typical examples that can be generalised as a beam with variable thickness. A minor damage on any part of these structures reduces the strength of the structure and leads to a major failure. In this paper, a new formulation of an objective function for the genetic search optimization procedure along with the residual force method is presented for the identification of macroscopic structural damage in a tapered beam. The developed model requires experimentally determined data as input and detects the location and extent of the damage in the beam. Here, numerically simulated data using finite element models of structures are used to identify the damage at a reasonable level of accuracy. Damage parameters given theoretically are compared by the present procedure and are found to be in good agreement. S.K. Panigrahi, S. Chakraverty, B.K. MishraKEYWORDSDamage, Genetic Algorithm (GA), Residual Force, Objective Function, Eigen Value, tapered cantilever beam
