Determination of local strain distribution at the level of the constituents of particle reinforced composite: An experimental and numerical study

Abstract

This paper is devoted to numerical and experimental investigation of the strain field at the level of the constituents of two-phase particle reinforced composite. The research aims to compare the strain distributions obtained experimentally with the results obtained by using a computational model based on the concept of the representative volume element. A digital image correlation method has been used for experimental determination of full-field strain. The numerical investigation was conducted by the finite element analysis of the representative volume element. Moreover, usage of the novel method of assessment of the speckle pattern applicability for the measurement of local fields by using the digital image correlation method has been proposed. In general, the obtained experimental and numerical results are in good agreement although some discrepancies between the results have been noticed and discussed.