Design of defense hole system for biaxially-loaded plate with a single central circular hole

Abstract EN

Stress concentration associated with a single central circular hole in Biaxially-Loaded plates can be reduced by up to 22 %.

With such a reduction in the maximum stress level the improvement in fatigue life of a structural part can be very significant.

This significant reduction is made possible by introducing elliptical auxiliary holes close to the main holes in the areas of low stresses along the principal stress direction.

The introduction of these holes in such places helps in smoothing the principal stress trajectories past the main hole.

In the present paper, a systematic study based on univariate search optimization method is undertaken by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to determine the optimum size and location for an auxiliary defense whole system.

The results are validated by using the RGB-photoelasticity.

The experimental and the FEA results show good agreement.

Three main goals are achieved by introducing such holes: material reduction, maximum stress reduction and working as crack arrest in case a crack propagates.