A new photoelastic approach to determine stress intensity factors

A new approach, in which the only information is the area of isochromatic f ringe loop, is presented to determine mode-I and mode-II stress intensity f actors(SIFs). For a mixed-mode crack, the expressions for SIFs K-I and K-II in terms of the area inside an isochromatic fringe loop and the area insid e an iso-sum fringe loop are given. A comparison of the present results wit h the previous results shows that the proposed method is stable and efficie nt.