Photoelastic analysis of surface-cracked elements in presence of Hertzian contact and interposed fluid

Starting from Way’s studies [6] in late 1935 a lot of work was made to investigate the influence of lubrication on contact fatigue surface crack propagation problems. A lot of numerical models can be found in literature; nevertheless an experimental evaluation of SIFs by considering the presence of the interposed fluid was never made. The present paper presents an experimental procedure modeling a contact problem of a disk with an surface-cracked semi-plane with inter- posed fluid: a photo elastic model with a sandwich design is proposed. The assembly realization is discussed in detail. Using a multi parametric approach experimental SIFs are obtained for different fluids. Results are reported and future work is proposed.