ABSTRACT
The interest of the scientific community towards the analysis of damaged beams is strongly motivated by the influence that damage might play in several engineering problems. Particular interest is focussed on the case of concentrated cracks. The latter have been modelled, according to a macroscopic approach, as an equivalent rotational spring that allows a rotation discontinuity interpreted as the crack effect on the response. Particularly, when damage occurrence along the beam span is not restricted to a single crack appearance, the equivalent spring approach shows to be suitable for determining competitive procedures and closed form solutions.
