Advanced Science and Technology Letters

Vol.64 (Mechanical Engineering 2014), pp.35-38

http://dx.doi.org/10.14257/astl.2014.64.09

Stress Concentration Factor Measurement of Tensile

Plate with Circular and Elliptical Hole by Digital Hybrid
Photoelastic Experiment

Choon Tae Lee1, Myung Soo Kim2 and Tae Hyun Baek3*
1
Department of Automotive Engineering, Seoyeong University, Gwangju, 500-742, Korea
{2Department of Electronic Engineering, 3*School of Mechanical and Automotive
Engineering}, Kunsan National University, Gunsan, Jeonbuk, 573-701, Korea
(*corresponding author)
citylee7447@seoyeong.ac.kr, {mskim, thabek}@kunsan.ac.kr

Abstract. This paper presents for determining the stress concentration around a
circular and an elliptical hole in a finite-width, tensile loaded plate by the
hybrid experimental-numerical method. In order to see the effects of varying
stress field, different numbers of terms in a power-series representation of the
complex type stress function are tested. The hybrid results are highly
comparable to those predicted by FEA. The result shows that this approach is
effective and promising because isochromatic data along the straight lines in
photoelasticity can be conveniently measured by use of phase shifting
photoelasticity.
Keywords: Photoelastic Experiment, Stress Concentration, Hybrid Method,
Phase Shifting Method.

1 Introduction

In photoelastic experiment, accurate measurement is not easy on an area adjacent to a

hole or the rapid change of geometric shape in specimen because photoelastic fringes
are dense due to stress concentration [1,2].
In this paper, stress distribution near circular and elliptical hole under uniaxial
tensile strip is analyzed with hybrid method using a transmission-type circular
polariscope. The simulated fringes patterns that are obtained by the hybrid stress
analysis are compared with the real fringe patterns and the validity of experimental
results is proved.

2 Method of Hybrid Stress Analysis

A stress function in arbitrary hybrid subregion as shown in Fig. 1, ( 1 ) and

( 2 ) , are represented with truncated Laurent expansion [3] as follows :

ISSN: 2287-1233 ASTL

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Advanced Science and Technology Letters
Vol.64 (Mechanical Engineering 2014)

m m

. (1)
k k k
( 1 ) k 1 , ( k 0 ), a n d ( 2 ) k B 1 k C 2
km km

Fig. 1. Conformal mapping of holes in the physical z-plane into the -plane.

In Eqs. (1), k b k ic k where b k and c k are real numbers, i 1 and k is

positive integer. B and C are constants that are related to the roots of characteristic
equation. When Eqs. (1) are substituted in the equations for stress components [4], the
equation for stress in the hybrid subregion is obtained as shown in Eq. (2).

V . (2)

In Eq. (2), { } { y , xy
, x }
T
, { }
T
{b m , c m , , bm , c m } , and { }
T
is constant
matrix. In addition, [V] is the matrix that is related to the conformal mapping function
and the roots of characteristic equation. The stress in the hybrid subregion , that
includes hole boundary , can be calculated by use of Eq. (2) once the constant {}
is calculated.
According to stress-optics law caused by birefringent phenomena [1,2], the stress
components are related to isochromatic fringe orders (N) as shown in Eq. (3).

2

2
N f

2
. (3)
x y
xy

2 2h

In Eq. (3), N is the isochromatic fringe order, f is the material fringe value and
h is the thickness of the specimen. As shown in Eq. (3), the stress components of Eq.
(2) at each point represent the isochromatic fringe order (N) through the stress-optics
law. In the other way, the stress components can be analyzed by use of the relation
between Eq. (3) and Eq. (2) once the isochromatic fringe order from photoelastic data
is determined.
The coefficients in Eqs. (1), k b k ic k , where b k and c k real numbers, must
be decided in order to determine the stress components. From Eq. (3), Eq. (2) can be
obtained with n of the measured data. The unknown coefficients of stress function,
k b k ic k , can be decided by nonlinear least squares method [5] that uses n of the
fringe data.

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 Advanced Science and Technology Letters
Vol.64 (Mechanical Engineering 2014)

3 Photoelastic Experiment

Finite-width uniaxially loaded tensile plate containing a circular hole and an elliptical
hole at the center of specimen [6] are selected for hybrid stress field analysis by use of
photoelasticity experiment.
Figures 2(a) and 3(a) show the phase map of isochromatic fringe by eight fringe
patterns that are obtained by the phase-shifting method [7]. Fringe data on the lines of
A-B, B-C and C-D of Fig. 2(a) and 3(a) is used to calculate hybrid stress field near
circular and elliptical hole. These data is used in hybrid method to calculate stress
field. Also, this data is used in the non-linear least square method to calculate stress
field. In Fig. 2(b) and 3(b), the calculated photoelastic fringe is compared with the
actual photoelastic fringe in order to show the validity of calculated results.

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. (a) Isochromatic fringe phase map. (b) Actual fringe patterns (left half) and
reconstructed fringe patterns (right half) for the specimen containing a circular hole.

(a) (b)
Fig. 3. (a) Isochromatic fringe phase map (b) Actual fringe patterns (left half) and reconstructed
fringe patterns (right half) for the specimen containing an elliptical hole.

The stress concentration factors of the circular-hole and the elliptical-hole

specimen by hybrid method and FEM [8] are conformable within difference of 2%
and 5%, respectively, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of stress concentration factors (Kt) obtained by experiment and FEM (ABAQUS)
for the circular-hole specimen.

Hybrid
Specimen FEM
Photoelasticity(m=9)
Circular-hole 3.43 3.48
Elliptical-hole 6.70 6.36

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Advanced Science and Technology Letters
Vol.64 (Mechanical Engineering 2014)

4 Conclusion

In this paper, stress field near circular and elliptical hole are analyzed with hybrid
method that uses series-type conformal mapping function and isochromatic fringe
data by photoelastic experiment. The results are summarized as follows;
The stress concentration factors in circular hole by hybrid method and FEM are
conformable within difference of 2% and the stress concentration factors in elliptical
hole by hybrid method and FEM are conformable within difference of 5%.
The actual photoelastic fringe and the calculated fringes are compared in order to
prove qualitatively the validity of results and standard deviation of percent errors for
experimental fringe and calculated fringe are analyzed in order to prove quantitatively
the validity. The fringe orders along arbitrary straight lines can be measured
conveniently when phase-shifting method is applied to photoelastic experiment.

Acknowledgement. This research was supported by Basic Science Research

Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the
Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Grant number: NRF-2010-0021248).

References

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RI., USA, http://abaqus.com.

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