An innovative approach to visualization of stress

This paper describes the development of a tool to help students easily visualize stresses in truss structures through photoelastic visualization of quickly assembled truss structures. Clear polymer structural members of varying lengths were designed with the capability to be connected to form a variety of simple truss structures. This development effort was conducted across functional areas in a mechanical engineering technology department. Eventually, a fully developed mechanical toolkit will be used in conjunction with computational and numerical tools in the study of stress, strain, and strength analysis as well as offering a platform to teach instrumentation techniques in experimental stress analysis