Digital image correlation

Chen Lujie Digital image correlation (DIC) is a very useful technique in many areas. In material testing, DIC may be used to calculate the deformation of an object and then to retrieve the strain-stress relationship so as to obtain the basic properties of the material, such as Youngs modules etc. The experiment of DIC is quite simple: take one image of the specimen before loading and a second image after loading. The deformation of the specimen is recorded in the images, provided that the optical magnification is suitable. DIC is then applied to compute the regional deformation between the two images. The direct output is usually a displacement field in the x and y direction respectively for twodimensional (2D) analysis or in x, y and z direction for 3D analysis. You may download the raw images from my homepage and follow the instructions to try out the DIC function of UU. 1. Run UU. 2. UU -> File -> Open (Open DIC images: D1_unload.jpg and D1_load.jpg.) 3. UU -> Tool -> Body -> Image motion (Select the two images and in the dialog box input parameters: 51, 30, 5, 31, 3, 2, 30, 20. Three images will be generated, as shown in Figure 1. They are the displacement field in the x and y direction respectively and a correlation coefficient image.)

Figure 1. (a) x-direction and (b) y-direction displacement field. (c) the correlation coefficient of each point in (a) and (b). 4. UU -> Tool -> Report -> Vector map (Select the displacement fields in the x and y directions and a vector field will be generated in the Fig program, as shown in Figure 2.) As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, the displacement fields are very coarse because UU only performs pixel-level data matching. In order to improve the accuracy, i.e. to perform sub-pixel level data matching, you have to resize the two images. Sub-pixel data matching is achieved by interpolation; in UU the interpolation is done through resizing the images, whereas in other software, it may be implicitly done in DIC.

Figure 2. A vector field representing the displacement field of Figures 1(a) and 1(b). 5. UU -> Tool -> Body -> Resize (Resize unload.jpg and load.jpg to 6000 4010, ten times of their original size. The interpolation algorithm can be linear interpolation.) 6. UU -> Tool -> Body -> Image motion (Select the two enlarged images and in the dialog box input parameters: 51, 30, 5, 31, 3, 2, 30, 20. The generated displacement fields and correlation coefficient image are shown in Figure 3.)

Figure 3. DIC on the enlarged images. (a) x-direction and (b) y-direction displacement field. (c) the correlation coefficient of each point in (a) and (b). 7. UU -> Tool -> Report -> Vector map (Select the displacement fields in Figures 3(a) and 3(b). The resultant vector field is shown in Figure 4.)

Figure 4. A vector field representing the displacement field of Figures 3(a) and 3(b).

As can be seen in Figures 3 and 4, the accuracy of the displacement fields is improved. In Figures 1 ~ 4, all displacement fields have only 30 by 20 pixels, which is a relatively low resolution. The resolution can be improved by modifying the input parameters of the image motion function. 8. UU -> Tool -> Body -> Image motion (Select the two enlarged images and in the dialog box input parameters: 51, 30, 5, 31, 3, 2, 300, 200. The last two parameters are changed from 30 and 20 to 300 and 200; so the resolution is increased by 10 times in both directions. The generated displacement fields and correlation coefficient image are shown in Figure 5.)

Figure 5. DIC on the enlarged images with an enhanced resolution. (a) x-direction and (b) y-direction displacement field. (c) the correlation coefficient image. UU also provides an all-in-one, image correlation function, UU -> Metrology -> Image correlation (DIC), in which sub-pixel accuracy is obtained by default. The function generates x and y direction displacement fields, x and y direction normal strain fields and the shear strain field, all overlaid on top of the original image. 1. UU -> File -> Open (Open DIC images: D2_unload.jpg and D2_load.jpg.) 2. UU -> File -> New (Duplicate either D2_unload or D2_load to create a mask image.) 3. On the duplicated image, click UU -> Tool -> Data -> Rectangle and draw a region of interest to output results. Set the value of this rectangle to any value above 255, as shown in Figure 6(a). 4. UU -> View -> Display mode -> Auto stretch (Change the display mode to auto-stretch so that the maximum displayed value is in the rectangle.) 5. UU -> Tool -> Threshold -> Manual and on the threshold dialog box, move the scrollbar to 255 and click OK. (This will separate the rectangle from the rest of the image. The mask image for UU -> Metrology -> Image correlation should contain a positive valued region for showing results. Any negative or zero valued regions will be removed from the results. The mask image is shown in Figure 6(b).)

Figure 6. (a) The rectangular region is set to any value above 255. (b) The image obtained by applying a threshold is the mask image for showing results. 6. UU -> Metrology -> Image correlation and sequentially select D2_unload, D2_load and the mask image. An export folder should also be selected to save five resultant images: x and y direction displacement fields, x and y direction normal strain fields and the shear strain field. Figure 7 shows the results obtained.

Figure 7. (a) x and (b) y direction displacement fields, (c) x and (d) y direction normal strain fields, and (e) shear strain field.