DIC applications highlights from China

Abstract

China has become a significant market for commercial digital image correlation systems, and usage is continuing to accelerate. The authors have been providing training and application support for more than 100 installations across the country. This paper reviews some of the most widely seen applications, as well as a few special cases. China produces more cars annually than any other country, so it is natural that there are many applications in the automotive industry, as well as related areas such as steel production. DIC is used to characterize new alloys and to determine forming limit curves for sheet metal. Nearly every steel manufacturer in China is equipped with a commercial DIC system. In the aerospace industry, DIC is used for various testing requirements, from basic static materials mechanical tests to determine material behavior; high rate strains; from component testing (i.e. aircraft panel test) to entire airplane strength tests. In the civil engineering industry, we have done DIC tests such as concrete tensile and compression tests, concrete wall shear tests, large concrete platform with different steel fibers bending tests, and whole building strain tests under earthquake simulation. And in the biomechanics industry, we use DIC to study implants mechanics features after they are implanted into the human body and grow together with human bones. Last but not least, in order to assure the accuracy of DIC, we have done quite a few comparison experiments between DIC and extensometers or strain gauges, and the results are quite satisfactory.