Simulation of Separating Isoclinics and Isochromatics from Photoelastic Fringes of a Disk using 8-step Phase Shifting Methodology

Photoelasticity is one of the most widely used methods for whole field stress analysis. In photoelasticity, the difference and the directions of the principal stresses we given isochromatic and isoclinic fringe patterns. Conventionally, principal stress directions are measured manually by relating the polarizer and analyzer of a plane polariscope at the same time. This is known to be the Tardy compensation method. This measurement can be very tedious and time consuming in whole field analysis. It is not possible to separate isoclincs from photoelastic fringes by conventional photoelastic technique. In this study, photoelastic theory is represented by Jones matrices and 4-steps and 8-steps phase shifting methods are described. A feasibility study using computer simulation is done to separate isoclincs and isochomatics from photoelastic fringes of a circular disk under diametrical compression. Fringe patterns of the disk are generated using stress optic law. The magnitudes of isoclincs and isochromatics obtained from 8-step phase shifting method are compared with those of theories. From computer simulation, it is verified to separate isoclincs and isochomatics from photoelastic fringes