Author(s)

I.S. Putra

Abstract

Some experiences in using the K-gage to measure stress intensity factors I.S. Putra Department of Aeronautical Engineering Institute of Technology Bandung, Indonesia Abstract Measurements of K were performed for different specimen geometries representing cracks in aircraft structures. Stress intensity factors of cracks in three specimen configurations were studied, i.e. cracks emanating from open holes, a crack in stiffened sheet, and a crack in a sheet with a bonded composite patch. The K-gage was used for this purpose, because it is simple to use and only needs standard instruments for strain gage measurements. The results of measurements showed that for a simple geometry of holes and a crack with three holes in one row, the K-gage gave a good correlation with the boundary element method with a difference of less than 3%. For a more complex geometry with two rows of holes the difference is around 15%, which is similar to the difference obtained for stiffened s

Keywords