Study on stress singularities in cylindrical shells with an arbitrary oriented crack using digital gradient sensing technique.

• Optical mechanics is applied to cylindrical shells. • The theoretical calculation method of DGS under cylindrical shell is established. • Reliability of DGS calculation of cylindrical shell fracture is proved. • Application range of DGS method is extended. In this paper, the transmitted digital gradient sensing (DGS) technique is applied to analyze stress singularity at the tip of an arbitrary oriented crack in a cylindrical shell. A thoretical model of the opitcal path near the tip of the inclined crack in a cylindrical shell under mixed-mode fracture is proposed based on the geometric optical imaging principle. An optical governing equation of DGS technique is established to relate the mixed-mode stress intensity fractors (SIFs) at the crack tip to the shell geometry parameters and the inclined crack sizes, and the angular deflection contours are theoretically plotted using this govering equation. Uniaxial tensile tests are carried out on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) cylindrical shells containing an edge crack with different inclined angles, and the optimal calculation area for the exaction of SIFs is determined from linear elasitic fracture mechanics. The effects of shell radius, shell thick, crack length, and crack angle on the mixed-mode SIFs are studied, respectively. These results show that the DGS technique is effective and accurate to evalute the stress singulary around an arbitrary oriented cracks in cylindrical shells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]