A Development of a Large Size Photoelastic System

Photoelasticity is a powerful tool in visualization of stress distribution. Under stress, plastic materials, e.g. acrylic acid resin, show birefringence. Using this property, the stress can be estimated by the photoelastic pattern. Although recent progresses in computer enable us to calculate the stress distribution of the complex structure numerically, visualization of stress distribution in granular system is still a difficult problem in numerical calculation. Especially, it is almost impossible to calculate stress distribution in a large size granular system by computer. Therefore, we develop a large size photoelastic system in order to visualize stress distribution of complex structure: the size of view is 50[cm]×50[cm]