The Boundary Element Method in Thermoelastic Stress Separation — I: Formulation and basic solution using a Monte Carlo method

Abstract

The development and background to a method of stress separation for experimental thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) for planar problems is described. The problem may be formulated in terms of two Poisson equations with coupled boundary conditions. The stress separation technique is based on the Boundary Element Method with a Monte Carlo procedure for the field integrals applied to mean stress data from the thermographic scans. The Monte Carlo technique has additional interest for the stress separation problem since random noise in the experimental thermographic data could, in theory, be minimised by the random sampling inherent in the Monte Carlo technique.