Author : B.B. Farande and V. V. Kulkarni

Stress concentration around countersunk hole is an important problem for mechanical engineering, used in various engineering applications. Abrupt change in geometry of component is known as stress concentration. The aim of this work is to investigate the stress concentration factor around countersunk hole in composite plate experimentally. The material used is carbon epoxy. And stress concentration is determined under tensile loading by using universal testing machine and strain indicator. The investigations are carried out by varying the tensile load and diameter of the hole. This paper includes mathematical analysis for calculating average strain from which stress is calculated for each specimen according to applied conditions. The calculated parameters such as stress concentration factor, stress, nominal stress are also graphically represented to get summary of the result.

Keywords: Countersunk holes, Stress concentration factor, Universal Testing Machine, Carbon epoxy plate