Abstract
In this paper, a digital dynamic photoelastic system was assembled to record the photoelastic fringe pattern produced by an ultrasonic wave incident on a strip. To verify the accuracy of the experimental results, the commercially available finite element method (FEM) software package ANSYS was employed, stress components at all nodes were obtained and the corresponding maximum shear stresses were calculated by using Matlab. For the case of a standing wave only, reconstructed photoelastic fringes were plotted and superimposed on the experimentally obtained fringe pattern to visually compare the extent to which they matched. The difference between the reconstructed fringes and thinned experimentally obtained photoelastic fringes was then calculated to check quantitatively the accuracy of the match. © 2006 SAGE Publications.