Use of automated photoelasticity to determine stress intensity factors of bimaterial joints

Abstract

A new systematic experimental procedure has been developed to obtain the stress intensity factors governing the singular stress field that occurs near the intersection between the interface and free edges of bimaterial joints. A preliminary theoretical study of the singular stress field is carried out by the well-known Airy stress function method. The obtained stress laws are properly combined with the basic law of photoelasticity in order to define a procedure that permits the zone dominated by the singularity to be located and the stress intensity factors (SIFs) to be computed on the basis of full field data provided from automated photoelasticity. In particular, a systematic error analysis is used to determine the model zone where the experimental data have to be collected in order to obtain accurate SIF evaluation. As an example, the proposed method is applied to determine the SIFs of various aluminium/ PSM-1 specimens under different external loading conditions using Fourier transform photoelasticity. The experimental results have been compared to those obtained by an independent procedure, based on a boundary element approach, in order to validate the accuracy of the proposed procedure.