Crack Growth and SIF Distributions at Critical Locations in Scale Models of Motor Grain Using Frozen Stress

After briefly reviewing recent relevant studies, a series of frozen stress photoelastic experiments were conducted on scale models of eight finned motor grain models of unequal fin lengths containing cracks. It was desired to study crack paths and stress intensity factor (SIF) distributions as cracks emanated from near critical stress locations at the critical fin tip. Paths of the crack border midpoint and corresponding stress intensity distributions are obtained. Some general observations are included.