Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations KootK on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Strain gauging--Transverse Correction Factors

Status
Not open for further replies.

EnginerdNate

Aerospace
Feb 4, 2019
84
Hi All,

I've been tasked with setting up the instrumentation for on of my company's structural tests. I interned as a test engineer back in undergrad but since then have been firmly on the manufacturing and design side of the house so I'm a bit rusty.

I am installing strain rosettes in various places around my structure. I have all the correct math to take the strain readings and real-time do the strain transformation to get principle strains and max shear strain in the structure at each gauge location, and I've also programmed in the transverse sensitivity correction equations. I have found several references helpful in doing so, but the following two were most helpful:



I am currently using the equations from the second link. I have verified that the equations for principle strains in both are equivalent though they are presented in different forms.

Where I run into a bit of a question in on transverse sensitivity. To put it bluntly, is this truly worth the computation, or, is it worth it in some situations and not others and how would that determination be made? The strain gauges I have purchased for this test(HBM stacked rosettes) have transverse correction factors of less than .5% for each gauge. I am wondering if corrections of this magnitude are likely to be washed out by other errors in the measurement system or noise in the readings. It seems like a lot of math to dedicate to such a small correction. This question was brought on by the many simplifying assumptions Vishay makes in several places in their paper, such as simplifying. (1-nu*k) ~= 1.

That said, it only took a few minutes to add the correction factors to the calculation and now that I've done it once I have a template to use for future tests, so maybe there's just not a good reason *not* to do it. I am mostly curious what would be considered a standard approach in industry.

Thanks!
Nathan
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

I'm not sure of the accuracy tolerance you need, but in my experience with dynamic strain measurements, transverse correction of that magnitude would make no difference. Assuming adhered gauges, you probably have more error in the adhesive transfer.

 
"principle strains" ... principAL strains.

are you strain gauging linear loadpath (like a fitting or a spar cap or a stringer) or a planar loadpath (like a skin panel) ?
The former are ok for single axis strain gauge, the latter Need (IMHO) rosettes.

Al or composite ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
 
rb1957-Aaaaah! Can't believe I mistyped that. Thanks for the correction.

It's a panel measurement. Composite.

Ron-That was my suspicion. In any case it's a simple calculation to do once a script is setup to do it for you.

Thanks,
Nathan
 
on a panel I'd use a rosette gauge, and measure the strain in three directions (so you can determine the principal strains).

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
 
Yes, I have 6mm HBM stacked rosettes to use for this test.

I have thought of one question, and I'll share it while I refresh my memory on this detail at risk of exposing my shoddy memory in this area. When computing principal strains from a rosette attached to a composite substrate, will the non-isotropic nature of the substrate be a problem?

Thanks,
Nathan
 
The short answer I've been able to glean so far from revisiting my mechanics of materials and doing a bit of searching is that the principal strain calculations are unaffected, but that if you want to calculate principal stresses you need to do some work to determine the the difference in principal angles induced by the non-isotropic material. So for my purposes (comparison with and validation of FEM principal strain results at the rosette locations) no special treatment is needed.

Open to any corrections.

Thanks,
Nathan
 
yes, principal strains then compare to FEM results directly (or use stiffness matrix to decompose ply stresses.)

But how does this help your question about "transverse correction factors" ... I think these are minor corrections (possibly it was a bigger problem in earlier s/g and with better understanding and build it's not particularly relevant any more ? From your links, I suspect it has to do with the physical size of the a/g.

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
 
We wandered off topic a bit after your question about composite vs aluminum structure got me off on a tangent. The short answer is it doesn't.

I think these days the correction factors are so low they likely contribute little to the final results, but my decision in this particular case is to apply them to the measurements because it didn't take any time at all to code up. I am using labview for data acquisition but I do not have an NI DAQ so all of my measurement calculations are "manually" programmed anyway so adding a matlab script subVI to do the transverse correction was not a difficult addition to the program.

I am recording the raw data as well as the processed data, so I could always go back and recalculate without the correction factors and see what the influence actually is in my case.
 
how come you're "slumming it" in the mech forum ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
 
Didn't see a better place to put this on first glance, since it's a general structural test procedure question and not specific to aero or another subspecialty. Is there a test engineering/structural testing subforum?

I'd taken the "structural engineers" subforum here to have more of a civil engineering focus.
 
I assumed you're working aerospace ... so I'd've started there. Maybe you're working mech ?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?
 
It is an aerospace application but I thought the question was too general for the aero forum. In any case I think I have the answers I need!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor