A simple and robust methodology is presented to determine the location and amount of crack in beam like structures based on the incremental particle swarm optimization technique. A comparison is made for assessing the performance of standard particle swarm optimization and the incremental particle swarm optimization technique for detecting crack in structural members. The objective function is formulated using the measured natural frequency of the intact structure and the frequency obtained from the finite element simulation. The outcomes of the simulated results demonstrate that the developed method is capable of detecting and estimating the extent of damages with satisfactory precision.