Two new shear deformable curved elements are developed for the analysis of circular and generally curved beams. The proposed scheme removes both shear and membrane lock deficiencies. In addition, effects of open radial edge cracks are included using the local flexibility approach. To form novel cracked beam finite elements, these additional flexibilities are added to those of the intact curved beam element. As a result, authors’ formulation is appropriate for fracturemechanic applications, as well as the crack detection methods based on the vibration analysis. Various numerical examples evaluate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed elements in computation of forces, displacements and frequencies of cracked and noncracked structures.

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