Abstract
It is well known that photoviscoelastic technique can be used as an experimental technique for viscoelastic stress and strain analysis. However, this technique is far too complicated, because the transient birefringence and temperature should be continuously measured over the period of the loading process in order to determine the transient stress and strain.
The uncertainty of the reliability of the numerical solution of viscoelastic stress analysis still exists essentially, because the analytical conditions employed for numerical calculation, such as material parameters, configuration and boundary conditions and others, should be numerically modeled.
In this paper, an approach to experimental and numerical hybrid analysis of the stress and strain in a viscoelasic body, which is straightforward and reliable, is proposed. In this analysis, the experimental birefringence measured easily at arbitrary time is compared with that numerically calculated for the purpose of assuring the reliability of the numerical results. The effectiveness of the proposed method is assessed by a specific example, in which the thermal stress generated in a rectangular epoxy beam subjected to rapid cooling is analyzed by this hybrid method.
