Investigation of in-plane stresses on bolted flange joints using digital speckle pattern interferometry

Digital Speckle Pattern Interferometry (DSPI) is a promising field for a wide range of applications such as measurement of displacements/deformations, contouring, nondestructive testing, etc. It has holographic sensitivity and circumvents delays in photographic processing/filtering. Speckle correlation interferometry can be made sensitive to only one of the components of in-plane displacement by illuminating the object with two beams symmetric about the viewing axis and imaging along this axis using a viction. This configuration allows measurement of in-plane displacements independent of out-of-plane displacements.

In this paper, the in-plane deformation/stress distribution has been studied for a typical bolted flange joint of a pressure vessel using two beam illumination DSPI. The information obtained can be very useful in predicting the leakage behaviour of such joints employed in pressure vessels. Experimental investigations along with theoretical predictions are presented.