Experimental Visualisation Methods for Three-Dimensional Stress Fields of Porous Solids

The physical visualisation of a three-dimension (3D) stress field is a promising method for quantitatively analysing and revealing the stress distribution and evolution of a porous solid, and it significantly contributes to the understanding of the governing effects of stress fields on the mechanical behaviours of complex porous solids. However, experimental limitations regarding the manufacture of complex porous models and the extraction of the stress distributions in matrices inhibit the accurate visualisation of the 3D stress fields of porous structures. This paper presents a method of experimentally visualising and elucidating the 3D structures and stress fields of porous solids using photopolymer materials, 3D printing, the frozen-stress method, and photoelastic tests. Transparent thick discs containing various randomly distributed pores were produced using photopolymer materials and 3D printing technology. Experimental measures, including the frozen-stress method, photoelastic testing, and the phase-shifting method, were applied to quantitatively characterise the 3D stress fields distributed throughout the porous discs under radial-direction compressive loads. The temperature for 'freezing' stresses in the photopolymer materials was experimentally determined. The effects of pore distribution and population on the stress-field characteristics were investigated. The experimental results were used to validate the numerical analysis of the stress-field characteristics of the porous models. The visualisation test results agreed well with those of the numerical simulations. The proposed method can be used to visually quantify the characteristics and evolution of the 3D stress fields of porous solids.