Integration of laser-speckle and finite-element techniques of stress analysis

A study of the combined use of laser-speckle and finite-element methods for stress analysis is described. The speckle technique provides displacement data which can be directly input to a finite-element computer program for the determination of stresses. The displacement data can be used as boundary conditions for the examination of a subregion of the structural component to be analyzed. A substantial reduction in computational effort can be realized over conventional finite-element analysis of the entire structure. Also, a sizeable reduction in the required amount of experimental data may occur since direct numerical differentiation of the data is not required for strain evaluation. Acceptable accuracy may be obtained even when experimental displacement data may be too scarce for traditional numerical differentiation. Random error in experimental displacement is illustrated to have localized effects on the calculated stress field. Paper was presented at 1983 SESA Spring Meeting held in Cleveland, OH on May 15–19, 1983.