PHOTOELASTIC STRESS-ANALYSIS USING AN OBJECT STEP-LOADING METHOD

Sensitive, computer-aided retardation phase measurement methods suffer from the problem of discontinuity, which, in turn, hinders faultless phase unwrapping for stress determination in photoelasticity. An objec t step-loading method is introduced in this paper to overcome such a p roblem. One advantage of the technique is that the entire loading-to-s tress history is computed. In this paper, the theoretical aspects rela ted to implementation of the object step-loading method in computer-ai ded photoelasticity are outlined, and experimental verification is per formed on a birefringent model subjected to compressive loading by com paring stress values with those computed using the theory of elasticit y.