Abstract
ABSTRACT This dissertation focused on conducting two types of photoelastic experiments, the transmitted-light photoelastic method and the scattered-light photoelastic method, and then validating the experimental results through a finite element package ANSYS to investigate the thermal stress distribution of bimaterial structures under thermal loading. Initially, the transmitted-light photoelastic method was applied to examine the thermal stress distribution of bimaterial structures. In addition, the scattered-light photoelastic method was first employed to study the thermal stress distribution of bimaterial structures with or without defect at different locations. Through changing the incident locations of the optical slice on the PLM-4B photoelastic material with and without defects of circular hole, the value of secondary principal stress difference (SPSD) can be obtained at the top surface, sub-surface and the middle surface of the specimen. Simultaneously, the experimental results were compared with the ANSYS simulated results. Due to the limitation of the experiments, the transient state for the interfacial stresses of the bimaterial structure and the stresses at the vicinity of the circular hole were calculated by ANSYS.