Abstract
A PAPER of the greatest interest to all who con template the design and equipment of a photo-elastic laboratory, and indeed of interest to engineers generally, was read to the Junior Institution of Engineers by Prof. E. G. Coker and appears in full, with many illustrations, in the Journal of the Institution of April 1935. It was prepared with the view of giving an outline of the essential requirements of a photo-elastic laboratory when a start is being made from the beginning of things and not merely an adjunct to a larger laboratory already well supplied with much of the experimental apparatus and machinery, which can be utilised for photo-elastic work. For this purpose, the paper opens with a concise statement of the elements of photo-elasticity, a subject which might with advantage be taken up much more widely and at an earlier stage than at present, as the elastic properties of materials are of more or less importance to all engaged in technical work, though of course in a much greater degree to engineers. By its means a considerable advance has been made in our knowledge of the distribution of stress intensities at discontinuities, where very little exact information was previously available. It is particularly useful in the stress analysis of fusion joints, in which it is, as a rule, a fallacy to assume that stress distributions can be determined by applying elementary methods. In this paper, Dr. Coker takes the connexion of two steel plates in line by means of a V fusion weld as a typical example of the incalculable stresses which can be determined by photo-elastic analysis. He describes the apparatus required and concludes with a description of a detached photo-elastic laboratory made by a small addition to a medium-sized house.
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Equipment of a Photo-Elastic Laboratory. Nature 136, 136–137 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136136d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136136d0