Strain

From my thesis project. . . this is a 1.25" tall by 1" wide by .03" thick piece of carbon fiber laminate with a notch cut in one side. The top of it has been displaced vertically upward by around .025" with around 1000lbs of force.

This picture is a graphical represnetation of strain in the x (horizontal) direction under tension in the y. The blue is negative strain (compression) induced mostly by the carbon fiber laminates geometry, which has the strong carbon fibers aligned from the notch to the left corners at 30 degrees from vertical ([±30]s ). The fibers covered by blue are holding most of the force right now.

My project uses a canon digital rebel and a series of Matlab programs to measure strain off the whole surface of a sample optically for thousands of dollars less then a comparable commercial system and with more flexibility.