Abstract
To the authors' best knowledge this is the first time that the photoelastic method has been used to determine experimentally the whole-field state of thermal stresses of bonded structures. Except for the immediate vicinity of the interfacial edges, the photoelastic results were confirmed through the finite element method (FEM), Theoretical solutions provided by both Timoshenko and Suhir were then re-examined and compared with the photoelastic and FEM results. A comparison of those results indicated that the current theoretical solutions are oversimplified and need to be improved.