DETERMINATION OF KI, KII AND TRAJECTORY OF INITIAL CRACK BY ADAPTIVE FINITE ELEMENT METHOD AND PHOTOELASTIC TECHNIQUE.

The article focuses on the assessment of adaptive finite element method and photoelastic technique in identifying stress intensity factors, crack propagation and trajectory which are essential to predict the life of a product. It states the use of single, double and slant-edge crack plates as standard problems to assess the performance of both techniques. Moreover, results show that both methods provide accurate prediction of the stress intensity factors and initial crack trajectory.