Experimental Investigation of Damage Detection Based on a Novel Optical Method

In this article, the stress concentration in homogenous material was studied using an optical method of caustics. The study on stress concentration is of great research value to evaluate the damage inside materials. In this work, one optical experimental method, caustics method, is introduced to study the mechanical behavior of an elastic plate of transparent material. The governing equations of caustics method which is used to represent the optics-mechanics relation of the singular yield close to the external load are derived based on the exponential asymptotic expansion. The experimental result shows this optical method as a nondestructive methodology can be used to detect the damage in load zone with high accuracy.