Abstract
Reflection of a bundle of coherent light on the warped cross section of a prismatic bar submitted to torsion forms a caustic on a receiver plane. From the mathematical expression of this curve and the theory of reflected caustics, it is possible to evaluate accurately the warping function of the cross section. Using this idea, it was possible to study the torsion problem in prismatic bars with sections which were equilateral triangles and squares. It was observed that the shape of the caustic is an hypocycloid curve with three or four cusps respectively. By evaluating the warping function by using elements from the respective caustics it was possible to find out that, for the triangular cross section, the expression for the warping function coincided exactly with the expression given by the exact solution of the problem. For the square cross section, a closed-form solution for its warping function was readily derived, to which the series approximation solution differed only by a few percent at maximum for the shear stresses.
Since the method can be readily extended to any canonical polygonic cross section, it constitutes a general solution for the torsion of prismatic bars, which approximates their exact deformations better than the solutions based on the Saint-Vénant assumptions.
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Theocaris, P.S. The warping functions of regular prismatic bars under torsion evaluated by caustics. Experimental Mechanics 29, 285–290 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02321409
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02321409