Instrumentation utilizing the thermoelastic effect has become established in recent years as an important tool for experimental stress analysis. This instrumentation provides full field stress data in a digitized form that can be integrated with computer aided design methods for experimental optimization and validation of designs.
More recently the same full field data acquisition techniques have been applied to vibration measurements. As a result stress and vibration data can be obtained from the same experimental set-up.
The paper describes theoretical aspects of the thermoelastic effect upon which the stress measurements are based. It goes on to show how laser Doppler interferometric techniques can be incorporated into stress measuring instrumentation. Results from typical aerospace components are used to illustrate applications of commercially available instrumentation (Fig. 1).
