Deformation Measurements at the Sub-Micron Size Scale: II. Refinements in the Algorithm for Digital Image Correction

Improvements are proposed in the application of the Digital Image Correlation method, a technique that compares digital images of a specimen surface before and after deformation to deduce its sureface (2-D) displacement field and strains. These refinements, tested on translations and rigid body rotations were significant with regard to the computer efficiency and covergence properties of the method. In addition, the formulation of the algorithm was extended so as to compute the three-dimensional surface displacement field from Scanning Tunneling Microscope tomographies of a deforming specimen. The reolsution of this new displacement measuring method at the namometer scale was assessed on translation and uniaxial tensile tests and was found to be 4.8 nm for in-plane displacement components and 1.5 nm for the out-of-plane one spanning a 10 x 10 μm area

Submicron Deformation Field Measurements II: Improved Digital Image Correlation

This is the second paper in a series of three devoted to the applicaiton of Scanning Tunneling Microscopy to mechanics problems. In this paper improvements to the Digital Image Correlation method are outlined, a technique that compares digital images of a specimen surface before and after deformation to deduce its (2-D) surface displacement field and strains. The necessity of using the framework of large deformation theory for accurately addressing rigid body rotations to reduce associated errors in the strain components is pointed out. In addition, the algorithm is extended to compute the three-dimensional surface displacement field from Scanning Tunneling Microscope data; also, significant improvements are achieved in the rate as well as the robustness of the convergence. For Scanning Tunneling Microscopy topographs the resolution yields 4.8 nm for the in-plane and 1.5 nm for the out-of-plane displacement components spanning an area of 10 μm x 10 μm

Assessment of digital image correlation measurement errors: methodology and results

Optical full-field measurement methods such as Digital Image Correlation (DIC) are increasingly used in the field of experimental mechanics, but they still suffer from a lack of information about their metrological performances. To assess the performance of DIC techniques and give some practical rules for users, a collaborative work has been carried out by the Workgroup “Metrology” of the French CNRS research network 2519 “MCIMS (Mesures de Champs et Identification en Mécanique des Solides / Full-field measurement and identification in solid mechanics, http://www.ifma.fr/lami/gdr2519)”. A methodology is proposed to assess the metrological performances of the image processing algorithms that constitute their main component, the knowledge of which being required for a global assessment of the whole measurement system. The study is based on displacement error assessment from synthetic speckle images. Series of synthetic reference and deformed images with random patterns have been generated, assuming a sinusoidal displacement field with various frequencies and amplitudes. Displacements are evaluated by several DIC packages based on various formulations and used in the French community. Evaluated displacements are compared with the exact imposed values and errors are statistically analyzed. Results show general trends rather independent of the implementations but strongly correlated with the assumptions of the underlying algorithms. Various error regimes are identified, for which the dependence of the uncertainty with the parameters of the algorithms, such as subset size, gray level interpolation or shape functions, is discussed