Issue 35

E. Dall’Asta et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 35 (2016) 161-171; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.35.19 161 Focussed on Crack Paths New experimental techniques for fracture testing of highly deformable materials E. Dall’Asta, V. Ghizzardi, R. Brighenti, E. Romeo, R. Roncella, A. Spagnoli DICATeA, University of Parma, 43124 Parma (PR), Italy dallastaelisa@gmail.com , valeria.ghizzardi@gmail.com , riccardo.roncella@unipr.it , roberto.brighenti@unipr.it , andrea.spagnoli@unipr.it A BSTRACT . A new experimental method for measuring strain fields in highly deformable materials has been developed. This technique is based on an in-house developed Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system capable of accurately capturing localized or non-uniform strain distributions. Thanks to the implemented algorithm based on a Semi-Global Matching (SGM) approach, it is possible to constraint the regularity of the displacement field in order to significantly improve the reliability of the evaluated strains, especially in highly deformable materials. Being originally introduced for Digital Surface Modelling from stereo pairs, SGM is conceived for performing a one-dimensional search of displacements between images, but here a novel implementation for 2D displacement solution space is introduced. SGM approach is compared with the previously in-house developed implementation based on a local Least Squares Matching (LSM) approach. A comparison with the open source code Ncorr and with some FEM results is also presented. The investigation using the present DIC method focuses on 2D full-field strain maps of plain and notched specimens under tensile loading made of two different highly deformable materials: hot mix asphalt and thermoplastic composites for 3D-printing applications. In the latter specimens, an elliptical hole is introduced to assess the potentiality of the method in experimentally capturing high strain gradients in mixed-mode fracture situations. K EYWORDS . Digital Image Correlation; Highly Deformable Materials; Mixed-mode fracture; Mastic; Polylactide. I NTRODUCTION xperimental solid mechanics testing often requires accurate measurements of full-field strain components. The term Digital Image Correlation (DIC) refers to a class of non-contacting techniques that utilize two or more digital images depicting (at least partly) the same object and, performing image analysis, are capable of extracting a full field description of the shape, displacements and/or deformations of the object itself. Indeed, the improvement in image processing by means of microcomputers has fostered non-contact measurement techniques to become more and more popular in the experimental mechanics community [1], in comparison to some full-field measurement techniques like Moiré, interferometry or photoelasticimetry which were known and used beforehand but with a difficult trade-off between results accuracy, simplicity and costs. In the last decade, the opportunity to obtain displacement or strain contours directly (by automatic image processing), with low costs and high accuracy, has determined an increased use of optical devices, digital cameras, algorithms and software. DIC was originally proposed in the 1980’s [2] to study 2D solid mechanics problems, such as resin films [3], fiber reinforced polymer composites [4] and concrete [5]. Kim and Wen [6] first proposed the use of DIC technique as a possible displacement/strain measurement method for asphalt mixture. Seo et al. [7] utilized a DIC technique to investigate the size and shape of the fracture process zone for asphalt mixtures. E