Chaotic pattern of unsmoothed isochromatics around the regions of concentrated stresses

Photoelastic isochromatics are computationally reconstructed from the results of finite element analysis. Fast variation of the components of stresses cannot be approximated by a coarse non-adaptive finite element mesh. Visually chaotic and attractive looking pattern of numerically reconstructed photoelastic fringes prevents interpretation of the field of stresses around the regions of concentrated stresses. The phrase ‘‘chaotic pattern’’ is used in this paper in a loose sense to refer to the intricate and unpredictable patterns produced by this approach. One goal of this paper is to present these photoelastic patterns for their aesthetic appeal. r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.