Reducing stress concentration around a hole in a plate subjected to biaxial tension

Abstract

Reducing stress concentration has always been one of the main concerns for engineers, and piezoelectric patches are found to be effective in reducing this stress by altering stress flow around a notch. In this paper, the effect of using these patches around a hole in a metal sheet subjected to various ratios of biaxial tension is addressed. A quarter of a sheet with hole is modeled, and optimum arrangement of up to 12 patches in each quarter that leads to maximum stress reduction was determined using ant colony optimization algorithm. It was shown that there is no considerable stress reduction when the biaxial tension ratios are 1 and 0.9 and for tension ratio of 0.7, the stress reduction is not significant. The analysis was verified by comparing the finite element results with experimental ones.