A very effective experimental method in plane stress problems to find the optimal profile of the holes to minimize stress and weight is Durelli's method of Photoelastic Stress Minimization (PSM). In this paper, the process of removing material slowly step by step from the stress raiser boundary in low stress region of the design domain is realised by finite element simulation of Durelli's method (FESD). An algorithm is developed to simulate PSM automatically using common FEM software and modest hardware. It incorporates a scheme of removing elements and smoothing the boundary after each iteration step to avoid effects of artificial stress raisers due to the process of removing elements, and control features to ensure the convergence to the optimal solution. The optimum profile found for a plate with a circular hole under biaxial tensile stress agrees with the analytical solution. In the case of biaxial stress state of different signs which has not been studied in the literature. the optimum hole profile is drastically changed. I t is shown that in stress distribution exhibiting isotropic points like this case. at certain stage of the iterative optimzation process. a scheme to protect the isotropic point has to be evoked to ensure convergence to the optimum solution.

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