Peridynamic Approach to Digital Image Correlation Strain Calculation Algorithm

Digital image correlation is an experimental optical non-contact full field displacement and strain evaluation method based on the surface subsets tracking with photo cameras, digital images processing, and numerical computation. However, the full field of strain computation is a challenging problem, mainly because the displacement field to be differentiated is not continuous, individual subsets are tracked by the optical digital image correlation system. Moreover, the numerical differentiation can also amplify the noise of the displacement field inducing thus strain errors when the displacement data are poor. The peridynamics theory (which equations are cast in terms of spatial integrals of displacements, instead of spatial derivatives in the classical continuum mechanics) based algorithm is considered in this study and applied for the experimental digital image correlation displacement field to analyze possible peridynamic differentiation method advantages. A strains convergence analysis between the digital image correlation and peridynamic differentiation methods is done in this study. The integro-differential strain calculation as an alternative method is validated against digital image correlation and finite element simulation strain fields. It is also shown that the digital image correlation, a noisy displacement field, still provides an accurate and low level noise strain evaluation based on the proposed method.