Abstract

Small scale experiments are invented to analyze several aspects of instability and bifurcation occurring in structures and within materials. Photoelasticity is employed to analyze the localization of stress in ordered granular materials and near stiff and thin inclusions embedded in an elastic matrix. Prototypes have been designed and realized of elastic structures evidencing buckling under tensile dead loading and flutter and divergence instabilities as related to dry friction. All the experiments have been performed at the Laboratory for Physical Modeling of Structures and Photoelasticity of the Department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering of the University of Trento.