Abstract
An experimental study has been conducted in which strain fields were used to investigate the behavior of subsonic crack propagation along the interface of an isotropic–orthotropic bimaterial system. Strain field equations were developed from available field equations and critically evaluated in a parametric study to identify optimum strain gage location and orientation. Bimaterial specimens were prepared with PSM-1 polycarbonate and Scotchply
® 1002 unidirectional, glass-fiber-reinforced, epoxy composite. Dynamic experiments were conducted using these specimens with strain gages mounted on the composite half to obtain values of the dynamic complex stress intensity factor,
K=
K
1+i
K
2, in the region of the crack tip while photoelasticity was used on the PSM-1 half. Results show that the trend and magnitude of
K obtained using strain gages compare favorably with those obtained using photoelasticity.