The effect of Poisson's ratio on stress concentrations

In design, it is common to use values for stress concentration factors (SCFs) obtained from textbooks. These textbook values have generally been obtained from photoelastic experiments for which Poisson's ratio will probably have a value greater than 0.3 and for frozen stress analysis a value approaching 0.5. However, when designing machine parts made from other isotropic materials, e.g. metals and structural ceramics, Poisson's ratio will probably have a lower value, which will affect the value of the SCF.

In this paper, various stress-raising features have been analysed using the finite element method to determine the stress concentration factor. It is shown that Poisson's ratio can have a significant effect on the SCF.