Photo-Orthotropic Elasticity: A New Technique For Stress Analysis Of Composites

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Abstract
Experimental methods of stress analysis are very useful for composite materials and structures because of the complexities due to anisotropy. This paper deals with the application of photoelastic methods to glass fiber reinforced plastics. The basic principles governing the photoelastic response in birefringent orthotropic composites are briefly reviewed. Then, three important aspects of photo-orthotropic elasticity, namely, photoelastic calibration, separation of principal stresses, and application to problems of engineering importance, are considered in detail. A new calibration specimen is proposed for determining the three independent photoelastic constants: an orthotropic half-plane subjected to a concentrated edge load. From the isochromatic response, the three stress-fringe values can be obtained by a least-squares procedure based on the theoretical stress distribution. Next, four methods of separating the principal stresses in birefringent com-posite models are proposed: the method of drilling small holes at the points of interest, the method of oblique incidence, the method of combining the transmitted photoelastic response with the reflected photoelastic response, and the method of birefringence dispersion. Finally, results from a photoelastic study of pinloaded composite models are presented to show the usefulness of the techniques of photo-orthotropic elasticity. These models simulate bolted joints in composites, which have been receiving increasing attention in recent years due to their importance in composite structures.

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