High-Accuracy 2D Digital Image Correlation Measurements with Bilateral Telecentric Lenses: Error Analysis and Experimental Verification

By comparing two digital images of a test planar specimen surface recorded in different configurations, two-dimensional digital image correlation (2D-DIC) provides full-field displacements to sub-pixel accuracy and full-field strains in the recorded images. For the 2D-DIC systems using an optical lens, a simple pinhole imaging model is commonly used to describe the linear relationship between the measured sensor plane displacements and the actual displacements in the object surface. However, in a practical measurement, various unavoidable disadvantageous factors, such as small out-of-plane motion of the test object surface occurred after loading, small out-of-plane motion of the sensor target due to the self-heating or temperature variation of a camera, and geometric distortion of the imaging lens, may seriously impair or slightly change the originally assumed linear correspondence. In certain cases, these disadvantages may lead to significant errors in displacements and strains measured by 2D-DIC. In this work, the measurement errors of 2D-DIC due to the above three disadvantageous factors are first described in detail. Then, to minimize the errors associated with these disadvantages, a high-accuracy 2D-DIC system using a bilateral telecentric lens is established. The performance of the established 2D-DIC system and other two 2D-DIC systems using a conventional lens and an object-side telecentric lens are investigated experimentally using easy-to-implement stationary, out-of-plane and in-plane rigid body translation tests. A detailed examination reveals that a high-quality bilateral telecentric lens is not only insensitive to out-of-plane motion of the test object and the self-heating of a camera, but also demonstrates negligible lens distortion. Uniaxial tensile tests of an aluminum specimen were also performed to quantitatively compare the axial and transversal strains measured by the proposed 2D-DIC system and those measured by strain gage rosettes. The perfect agreement between the two measurements further verifies the accuracy of the established 2D-DIC system.