Thermomechanical characterization of stress localization in glass: An experimental and numerical study

Thermoelastic stress analysis and quantitative calorimetry are full‐field noncontact techniques widely used to study the thermomechanical behaviour of materials. The first one linearly relates the sum of the principal stresses to the temperature variation, and the second one can be used to measure the mechanical dissipation. However, brittle materials such as glass are a priori bad candidates for these techniques. Indeed, their low‐temperature variations under loading lead to very noisy infrared images, and their brittle mechanical behaviour does not allow to deform them significantly. In the present paper, the thermomechanical characterization of a holed glass sample under cyclic loading is performed. A preliminary new filtering methodology has been applied to the thermal movie to remove the noise. The stress field obtained from the thermoelastic stress analysis is well correlated to the finite element model showing that this technique is adapted to study the thermoelastic response of brittle materials. Finally, the corresponding calorimetric response has been determined by using a simplified formulation of the heat diffusion equation. This permits to quantify heat sources and to carry out energy balances.