Development of a Hybrid Method of Reflection Photoelasticity for Crack Problems in Anisotropic Plates

Reflection type photoelastic experiment can be used more effectively than a transmission type photoelastic experiment especially in industrial fields. Moreover, composite materials have been widely used in engineering applications and structures because of their outstanding advantages which individual isotropic components do not have. The development of these materials requires a promising technique such as reflection photoelasticity to analyze their behaviors in service. Unfortunately, there are few experimental studies based on this technique. Therefore, a hybrid method based on this technique was developed in this research to analyze the fracture behavior of opaque anisotropic materials. The application of this method will help to understand the fracture behaviors of anisotropic materials used in engineering components and structures. The validity of this method was verified by comparison of the results obtained from this method with ones obtained from the hybrid methods for isotropic material on the same isotropic specimen. The reflection type photoelastic experiment for orthotropic materials was then applied to orthotropic plates with a central crack of various inclination angles. Using this hybrid method for anisotropic materials, stress intensity factors and separated stress components were obtained at the vicinity of the crack-tip in orthotropic plates from only the isochromatic fringe patterns of the isotropic coating material.