RESEARCH ARTICLE | MAY 09 2018

Strain gage based determination of mixed mode SIFs 

K. S. R. K. Murthy  ; H. Sarangi; D. Chakraborty

AIP Conf. Proc. 1958, 020023 (2018)

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5034554

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11 April 2024 09:18:53

 Strain Gage Based Determination of Mixed Mode SIFs

K.S.R.K. Murthy1, a), H. Sarangi2, b) and D. Chakraborty3, c)

1
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Assam-781039, India
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technical Education and Research, Bhubaneswar-751030,
India
3
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Assam-781039, India
a)
Corresponding author: ksrkm@iitg.ernet.in
b)
hrushikeshsarangi@soauniversity.ac.in
c)
chakra@iitg.ernet.in

Abstract. Accurate determination of mixed mode stress intensity factors (SIFs) is essential in understanding and analysis
of mixed mode fracture of engineering components. Only a few strain gage determination of mixed mode SIFs are
reported in literatures and those also do not provide any prescription for radial locations of strain gages to ensure

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accuracy of measurement. The present investigation experimentally demonstrates the efficacy of a proposed methodology
for the accurate determination of mixed mode I/II SIFs using strain gages. The proposed approach is based on the
modified Dally and Berger’s mixed mode technique. Using the proposed methodology appropriate gage locations
(optimal locations) for a given configuration have also been suggested ensuring accurate determination of mixed mode
SIFs. Experiments have been conducted by locating the gages at optimal and non-optimal locations to study the efficacy
of the proposed approach. The experimental results from the present investigation show that highly accurate SIFs
(0.064%) can be determined using the proposed approach if the gages are located at the suggested optimal locations. On
the other hand, results also show the very high errors (212.22%) in measured SIFs possible if the gages are located at
non-optimal locations. The present work thus clearly substantiates the importance of knowing the optimal locations of the
strain gages apriori in accurate determination of SIFs.

1. INTRODUCTION
Mixed mode (I/II) fractures are often found in-service loading conditions due complexity of structural
configurations and loading conditions. The stress intensity factors (SIFs) K I and K II are usually employed to
address the problems of mixed mode (I/II) loading conditions within the realm of linear elastic fracture mechanics.
As a result, considerable focus on determination of these mixed mode SIFs has been placed using analytical,
numerical and experimental techniques [1]. Experimental methods are very useful in complex situations and also
useful in verification of accuracy of the numerical methods.
Amongst various experimental techniques, strain gage based techniques for the measurement of stress intensity
factors are as efficient as other methods such as photoelasticity, caustics and moiré interferometry etc [2]. In case of
plane elastostatic conditions, good number of strain gage techniques are available for mode I loading conditions.
However only very few strain gage techniques [3, 4] have been proposed for measurement of mixed mode SIFs K I
and K II in isotropic materials under plane elastostatic conditions. In Dally and Berger [3] technique, measurement
of mixed mode SIFs is based on a multiparameter strain series containing large number of unknown coefficients
which allows locating the gages far away from the crack-tip. Clearly, the actual radial location of strain gage(s) play
an important role on accuracy of the measured SIFs.

3rd International Conference on the Science and Engineering of Materials (ICoSEM 2017)
AIP Conf. Proc. 1958, 020023-1–020023-8; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5034554
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1659-8/$30.00

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 The earlier works showed [5] that the selection of radial location of a strain gage is affected by plasticity effects,
3D effects, and strain gradients. Gages should not be placed in the vicinity of the crack-tip to avoid plasticity effects
and 3D effects. Due to the finite size of the gages, large errors in measured strains may also result near the crack tip.
On the other hand, strain gages placed at a large distance from the crack-tip will not be able to capture the singular
solution as it doesn’t prevail at such distances.
Although, the formulation of Dally and Berger [3] approach allows one to keep the gages away from the crack
tip to capture the singularity (even at such distant locations), no recommendations or suggestions were available
until recently on precise locations of gages to take advantage of their formulation. Clearly no such recommendations
lead to more serious problem if a technique involves use of more than one strain gage and thus limits the application
of these techniques. Therefore, choice of proper radial location of strain gages from the crack-tip is one of the most
important parameters required to be known apriori for accurate measurement of the SIFs using strain gage
techniques.
Recently authors have made an attempt [6] to the long standing problem of assessment of valid radial locations
for the accurate measurement of mixed mode SIFs. In this work authors demonstrated the existence and estimation
of valid or optimal gage locations which can be determined using the maximum permissible radial location rmax .
Further authors also presented [6] a modified Dally and Berger’s technique. A detailed procedure for computation of
the rmax of a given configuration can be found in Sarangi et al. [6] for the mixed mode (I/II) loading condition. Some
results of experimental verification of the existence and usefulness of the proposed optimal gage locations in
accurate estimation of mixed mode SIFs is has been also carried out by the authors [7]. The present work focuses on
presenting additional experimental results for efficacy of the proposed modified Dally and Berger’s technique with
the suggested optimal gage locations proposed by Sarangi et al. [6] in accurate estimation of mixed mode (I/II) SIFs
under elastostatic conditions.
The organization of the present paper is as follows: a brief theoretical background for experimental
determination of SIFs is reviewed in section 2. Section 3 presents details of specimen and experiments. Section 4
presents the results and discussion followed by important conclusions in section 5.

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2. THEORY
A very brief theoretical background is presented here, for more details the readers are referred to Sarangi et al.
[6, 7]. Referring to Fig. 1, in the modified Dally and Berger’s approach [6], the strain gages on the positive gage line
measures strain H aa (Fig. 1) at point P (defined by r and T ) in the direction of an angle D (with respect to the
crack axis) and while on the negative gage line measures H bb (in the direction of D ).

FIGURE 1. Illustration of modified Dally and Berger’s technique

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 Three strain gages are needed on each gage line for estimation of the mixed mode SIFs K I and K II . It should be
noted that the radial distance from the crack tip to the corresponding strain gages on the positive and negative gage
lines are necessarily to be same as shown in Fig. 1. According to the theory proposed by Sarangi et al. [6], in order
to estimate accurate SIFs, all the three gages on each gage line must be within the maximum permissible gage
distance rmax of a given configuration (see Fig. 1) as

§ thickness ·
rmin ¨ ¸ d ri d rmax (1)
© 2 ¹

where rmin is the half of the thickness of the specimen, a minimum distance to avoid three dimensional effects near
the crack tip [1]. The angular parameters T and D are given by

1 Q
cos 2D  (2)
1 Q

and
T
tan  cot 2D (3)
2

where Q is the Poisson’s ratio.

It can be shown that the sum of the strains H aa (measured on the positive gage line) and H bb (measured on the
negative gage line) is given by [6]

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­ T 1 § 3T 3T · ½
E (H aa  H bb ) r 2 A0 ®(1 Q ) cos  (1  Q )sin T ¨ cos 2D sin  sin 2D cos ¸ ¾
¯ 2 2 © 2 2 ¹¿
­ 3T 3 ª T T º½
2 A2 r 2 ®cos (1 Q )  (1  Q )sin T «sin cos 2D  cos sin 2D » ¾ (4)
¯ 2 2 ¬ 2 2 ¼¿
^
4 B1r 3/ 2 cos T cos 2 D Q sin 2 D  (1  Q )sin T sin 2D `
Similarly, subtraction of the strains H aa and H bb results to

­ T T
E (H aa  H bb ) r 2C0 ®2sin Q sin 2 D  cos 2 D  (1  Q ) cos sin 2D
¯ 2 2
1 § 3T 3T ·½ ­ T
 (1  Q ) sin T ¨ cos cos 2D  sin sin 2D ¸ ¾  2C1r ®cos (1  Q )
2 © 2 2 ¹¿ ¯ 2
ª T T § 2 T · º T T 2 ½
«sin 2 cos 2 cos 2D  ¨1  sin 2 ¸ sin 2D »  2sin 2 cos D  2Q sin 2 sin D ¾
2
(5)
¬ © ¹ ¼ ¿
­ T 3 T
2C2 r 2 ®2sin 2 cos 2 D Q sin 2 D  (1  Q ) sin T cos cos 2D
¯ 2 2 2
§ 3T 3 T· ½
(1  Q ) ¨ cos  sin T sin ¸ sin 2D ¾
© 2 2 2¹ ¿

where E is the Young’s modulus, A0 , A2 , B1 are mode I coefficients and C0, C1, C2 coefficients correspond to mode
II. Eqs. 4 and 5 can be obtained using the Generalized Westergaard approach [6]. It can be noticed that in Eq. 4 only
mode I coefficients are present and only mode II coefficients are present in Eq. 5. As these equations contain three

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unknown coefficients, therefore, by measuring strains H aa and H bb using three strain gages on each gage line, one
can easily determine the left hand side (LHS) quantities of Eqs. 4 and 5. Then the coefficients A0 and C0 can be
estimated by taking the best fit of the measured values of E (H aa  H bb ) r and E (H aa  H bb ) r to the curves on the
right hand sides (RHS) of Eqs. 4 and 5 respectively. Using the best-fitted coefficients of A0 and C0 the mixed mode
SIFs K I and K II can be determined as [6]

KI 2S A0 and K II 2S C0 (6)

3. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The present section describes the experimental verification of modified Dally and Berger’s approach using the
optimal gage locations proposed by Sarangi et al. [6] for the accurate estimation of mixed mode SIFs K I and K II .
Experiment on a slant edge cracked plate [7] have been conducted and SIFs have been determined using the strain
gage readings. Gages are placed at optimal and non-optimal locations in order to study the existence and importance
of optimal radial location on the accuracy of SIFs. The normalized SIFs in the present investigation are estimated as

KI K II
FI and FII (7)
V Sa V Sa

where V is the applied stress and a is crack length. The percent relative error in normalized SIFs is computed as

FIReference
or II
solution
 FIMeasured
or II
% Relative error u 100 (8)

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FIReference
or II
solution

The geometric and other details of the slant edge cracked experimental specimen with a / b 0.497 is shown in
Fig. 2(a). The material of the specimen is commercially available Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) which is a
homogeneous, isotropic and brittle material at room temperature and the thickness of the specimen is 5.6 mm. A
crack of length a is created as follows: a notch of width 2 mm has been introduced with the help of end milling
cutter for a length of a  1 mm (Fig. 2(a)) followed by a sharp crack of length 1 mm introduced with the help of
jewelry saw of thickness 0.22 mm. Dimensions and loading conditions ensured plane stress conditions during the
experiment. Table 1 shows geometrical and material properties of the selected specimen

FIGURE 2. (a) Schematic diagram of the experimental specimen (b) actual specimen

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 TABLE 1. Parameters of the experimental specimen used in the present investigation
Young’s Poisson’s rmax FI FII T D
modulus ( E ) ratio ( Q )
2917 MPa 0.382 29.27 mm 1.1307 0.5951 53.13 58.28

Following the procedure described by Sarangi et al. [6], the maximum permissible radial distance of a strain
gage rmax is computed and is listed in Table 1. The angle of orientation of the positive gage line ( T ) and negative
gage line ( T ) and the respective strain gage orientation angles ( D ) and ( D ) are also presented in Table 1. The
normalized mode I and mode II SIFs of the experimental specimen obtained using the finite element method are also
shown in Table 1. The above computed normalized SIFs have been employed as the reference solutions in Eq. 8 for
verification of optimal strain gage locations in subsequent sections.
The specimen (Fig. 2(a)) has been loaded in a closed loop servo hydraulic INSTRON 8801 machine with 100 kN
capacity. Strains are measured using the electrical resistance strain gages of type FLA-1-11-3LT (gage length of 1
mm) and make: TML Japan. NI data acquisition system comprising of cDAQ 9178 chassis has been employed for
acquiring, digitizing and processing the measured strain data. Quarter bridge circuit has been employed using the
strain module NI 8237. A universal analog input module NI 9219 has been used for the measurement of force from
the loading machine.
Figure 2(b) shows the photograph of the slant edge cracked specimen made of PMMA along with the strain
gages pasted at the selected radial locations along both the positive and negative gage lines. Six strain gages have
been pasted along the positive gage line and another six strain gages have been pasted along the negative gage line
maintaining the proper orientation of D and D respectively (see Table 1 and Fig. 1).
Referring to Eq. 1, according to the proposed technique [6] the strain gages should be located in the optimal
range t / 2 < r < rmax along both the gage lines to get the accurate values of mixed mode SIFs. However, strain
gages located beyond the rmax , are expected to provide highly erroneous experimental values of SIFs [6]. Thus they
are non-optimal locations.

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As the rmax value of the selected experimental specimen is found to be 29.27 mm (Table 1), three strain gages
are pasted at r1 = 6 mm, r2 = 16 mm and r3 = 27 mm along both the positive and negative gage lines which forms
optimal gage locations (see Eq. 1). On the other hand three more strain gages at r4 = 40 mm, r5 = 50 mm and r6 =
65 mm are also pasted on both the gage lines. As these locations are beyond the rmax therefore they form non-optimal
locations. It should be noted that according to the modified Dally and Berger’s technique the measurements from
any three strain gages on each of the gage lines are adequate for measurement of K I and K II [6].

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Experiments on slant edge cracked specimen as shown in Fig. 2(b) is loaded and strains are measured as
described in previous section. Figure 3 shows the raw data of measured strains H aa and H bb (circled data points) at
all the optimal gage locations ( r1 , r2 and r3 ) on both the positive and negative gage lines versus the applied load. Fig.
3 also show the best-fit straight lines to the raw data (solid lines in plots), along with slopes and the correlation
coefficients R 2 of best-fit lines. A perfect linear trend between the measured strains and the applied load at all the
gage locations on the positive and negative gage lines may be noticed. Though not presented here, similar trend have
been noticed in the measured strains at all other locations of the gages. It can be noticed from Fig. 3 that, as
expected, magnitude of strains decreases as the point of measurement moves away from the crack tip. Similar
observation has also been made at other gage locations.

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 11 April 2024 09:18:53
FIGURE 3. Measured strains at the optimal gage locations on both the positive and negative gage lines

Since a set of three strain gages along the positive and negative gage lines are required to estimate
experimentally the mixed mode SIFs, three sets of combination of gages have been used and are listed in Table 2.
The first set consists of optimal gage locations i.e., all the three strain gages locations ( r1 , r2 and r3 ) are within the
rmax (=29.27 mm). However, in the second set two strain gages at r2 and r3 are optimal gage locations and third
gage location ( r4 ) is at non-optimal location (i.e. beyond rmax ). Finally, the third set consists of all the three strain
gages located at non-optimal locations to show the consequence of placing all the three strain gages beyond the rmax .
The radial locations in Set-2 and Set-3 are intended to simulate situations which may arise in cases where the
knowledge of rmax is not available apriori.
TABLE 2. Different combination of strain gages for determination of mixed mode SIFs
Set Gage locations Gage locations
on positive gage line on negative gage line
Set-1 r1 , r2 , r3 r1 , r2 , r3
Set-2 r2 , r3 , r4 r2 , r3 , r4
Set-3 r4 , r5 , r6 r4 , r5 , r6

Following the procedure described in Section 2, the value of 0.5653 E(H aa  H bb ) r (Eq. 4) and
0.7533 E(H aa  H bb ) r (Eq. 5) have been obtained from the strain gage readings for all the sets presented in Table 2.
Figure 4(a) shows the measured data of LHS of Eq. 4 i.e., 0.5653 E(H aa  H bb ) r (circled data points) versus radial

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distance of strain gages r and Fig. 4(b) shows the measured data of LHS of Eq. 5 i.e., 0.7533 E(H aa  H bb ) r versus
r . These measured data have been obtained from readings of the gages in the Set-1 at a load of 200 N (See Fig. 3).

FIGURE 4. Estimation of unknown coefficients in Eqs. 4 and 5 using the experimental data

According to the modified Dally and Berger’s technique, the curve of the form on RHS of Eqs. 4 and 5 have
been best-fitted to the measured quantities 0.5653 E(H aa  H bb ) r and 0.7533 E(H aa  H bb ) r for the gage positions
corresponding to the Set-1 in Figs. 4(a) and 4(b) respectively. These best-fit curves (solid lines), along with the best-
fit mode I coefficients ( A0, A2 and B1 ) and mode II coefficients ( C0 , C1 and C2 ) also shown in Figs. 4(a) and 4(b)

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respectively.
Using the best-fit coefficients A0 and C0 the mixed mode SIFs K I and K II , and their corresponding normalized
SIFs FI and FII have been determined using Eq. 6 and Eq. 7, for all the sets in Table 2. Table 3 summarizes the
results obtained using the experimental data corresponding to test results in Fig. 3 on the mixed mode specimen.
This table shows the comparison between the experimentally obtained values of FI and FII with the reference
solutions given in Table 1. Table 3 also shows the percent relative errors computed using Eq. 8 in the experimentally
obtained normalized mixed mode SIFs FI and FII for all the three sets of strain gages.
TABLE 3. Comparison of experimental values of FI and FII with the reference solutions
Set Strain Reference solution Experimental values % Rel. Error (Eq. 8)
gage (Table 1)
location FI FII FI FII FI FII
Set-1 r1 , r2 , r3 1.1300 0.5831 0.064 0.47
Set-2 r2 , r3 , r4 1.1307 0.5951 1.1953 0.3910 5.71 31.90
Set-3 r4 , r5 , r6 0.5209 -0.6679 53.93 212.22

From the results in Table 3, it is interesting and important to notice that the percent relative error of normalized
SIFs is only 0.064% for FI and only 0.47 % for FII in the Set-1 where all the strain gages are optimally located.
On the other hand in the Set-3, where all the gages are placed in non-optimal locations the error in SIFs are as high
as 53.93% in FI and 212.22% in FII . The errors in Set-2 where only one strain gage placed in non-optimal locations
lie between the Set-1 and Set-3. It is important to realize that even if only one out of the three strain gages is placed
beyond the rmax , such as in the Set-2, considering the errors in both the FI and FII together are unacceptable.
The results in Table 3 unquestionably validate the importance of the optimal gage locations and hence rmax of a
given configuration for experimental measurement of accurate values of the mixed mode SIFs K I and K II . The
present results also show that very accurate mixed mode SIFs can be measured using the modified Dally and

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Berger’s technique proposed by Sarangi et al. [6] by placing the gages at the optimal locations given by Eq. 1.
Further, the results clearly demonstrate penalty that is to be paid when the strain gages are placed at non-optimal
locations due to no prior knowledge of the rmax and results clearly show that such cases lead to highly erroneous
values of SIFs. The results also provide experimental support to the approach devised to estimate the rmax of any
mixed mode configuration by Sarangi et al. [7].

5. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, an experimental study has been carried out to examine the efficacy of a recently proposed mixed
mode strain gage technique known as modified Dally and Berger’s technique by the authors and existence and
usefulness of the optimal gage locations for the accurate measurement of mixed mode SIFs. Experimentally values
K I and K II show excellent agreement with the reference solutions when the strain gages are located at optimal
locations. On the other hand, gages located at non-optimal locations show very high errors in measured values of K I
and K II . It is observed that even placing one of the three strain gages outside the rmax (non-optimal gage location)
would result in a high error in the measured SIF values. The present results also demonstrate the importance of
knowing the valid strain gage locations apriori for the experimental measurement of SIFs.

REFERENCES
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N. Sharpe Jr. (Springer, New York, 2008), pp. 125-158.
3. J. W. Dally and J. R. Berger, “A strain gage method for determining and in a mixed mode stress field”, in
Proceedings of the SEM Spring Conference on Experimental Mechanics (Society for Experimental Mechanics,

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New Orleans, LA, 1986), pp.603-612.
4. A. Dorogoy and D. Rittel, Eng. Fract. Mech. 75, 4127-4139 (2008).
5. A. Shukla, B. D. Agarwal and B. Bhushan, Eng. Fract. Mech. 32, 469–477 (1989).
6. H. Sarangi, K. S. R. K Murthy and D. Chakraborty, Eng. Fract. Mech. 88, 63-78 (2012).
7. H. Sarangi, K. S. R. K. Murthy and D. Chakraborty, J. Test. Eval. 45, 751-762 (2017).

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