Special Issue Article

J Strain Analysis
2014, Vol. 49(4) 224–232
Ó IMechE 2013
High-temperature strain measurement Reprints and permissions:
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using active imaging digital image DOI: 10.1177/0309324713502201
sdj.sagepub.com

correlation and infrared radiation

heating

Bing Pan1, Dafang Wu1 and Jianxin Gao2

Abstract
A technique for non-contact and full-field high-temperature strain measurement of a sample subjected to radiation heat-
ing using active imaging digital image correlation is described in this work. A high-performance quartz lamp heater sys-
tem was designed to reproduce transient thermal environments experienced by hypersonic vehicles. The digital images
of the test sample surface at various temperatures are captured using a novel active imaging optical system based on a
combination of monochromatic light illumination and bandpass filter imaging. Subsequently, the captured images are pro-
cessed by a robust reliability-guided displacement tracking algorithm with an automatic reference image updating scheme
to extract full-field thermal deformation. With the improvements made in both the imaging system and correlation algo-
rithm, the de-correlation problem of speckle patterns caused by the thermal radiation and surface oxidation of the
heated test object are effectively addressed, enabling reliable deformation measurement in extremely high temperature
environments. The performance of the proposed active imaging digital image correlation technique is verified by two
experiments: (1) measurement of the uniform thermal strains of a chromium–nickel austenite stainless steel sample
which is heated from room temperature to 1300 °C, and (2) measurement of the non-uniform thermal strain fields of a
woven C/SiC composite at 1550 °C. The test results show that the active imaging digital image correlation is an easy-to-
implement yet effective optical technique for high-temperature strain measurement, and has great potential in character-
izing thermo-mechanical behaviour of materials and structures for hypersonic vehicles. Limitations and potential
improvements of the present technique are also discussed.

Keywords
Digital image correlation, active imaging, high temperature, thermal deformation

Date received: 12 April 2013; accepted: 23 July 2013

Introduction vehicles can be categorized into convection heating2–4

During flight at a speed greater than 5 times the speed
of sound, the structural materials of hypersonic vehicles
may be subjected to very high temperatures due to tran-
sient aerodynamic heating. In order to ensure the safety
and reliability of the structures, it is vital to understand
the mechanical behaviour of these materials and struc-
tures at high temperature. Generally, accurate measure-
ment of high-temperature strains of the hypersonic
vehicle materials and structures in laboratory involves
two main challenges:1 (1) how to reproduce the transi-
ent aerodynamic thermal environment; (2) how to mea-
sure the strains of the test specimens under thermal and
mechanical loads.
The techniques for reproducing the aerodynamic
thermal environment experienced by hypersonic
and non-convection heating.5,6 High-temperature wind
tunnel is a typical convection heating technique, in
which high-temperature airflow rapidly flow over the
surface of the test structure to force convection heat
transfer. With such a wind tunnel, a high-temperature
aerodynamic heating environment can be produced.
The surface shear effects caused by the high-speed
1
Institute of Solid Mechanics, Beijing University of Aeronautics &
Astronautics, Beijing, PR China
2
TWI Ltd, Cambridge, UK
Corresponding author:
Bing Pan, Institute of Solid Mechanics, Beijing University of Aeronautics &
Astronautics, Beijing 100191, PR China.
Email: panb@buaa.edu.cn

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Pan et al.
movement of airflow can also be simulated. However,
wind tunnel testing is extremely costly, and for this rea-
son it may not be a practical solution for routine tests
that require an aerodynamic heating environment.
Presently, quartz lamps have been used widely in vari-
ous aeronautical research works to heat up the test spe-
cimens. This is because infrared radiation heating using
quartz lamps offers the following attractive advan-
tages:2 (1) quartz lamps have low thermal inertia and
excellent electric control performance, making them
suitable for high-speed transient aerodynamic heating;
(2) due to their very high heating power and small size,
quartz lamps can be assembled to different sizes and
shapes, thus suitable for thermal testing of both small
and large structures with complex shapes; and (3) the
cost of infrared heating using quartz lamps is much
lower than that of a high-temperature wind tunnel.
Although strain of a structure under high tempera-
ture can be measured using appropriate strain gauges
(e.g. foil, weldable and capacitive strain gauges), it is
noted that the strain gauge technique has the following
disadvantages.7 First, a strain gauge only provides a
pointwise measurement which is the average over the
gauge length. Second, the preparation and attachment
of a high-temperature strain gauge is time-consuming
and laborious. Third also most importantly, the strain
gauge accuracy is seriously affected by various factors
associated with high-temperature environment. These
issues include the mismatch of coefficient of thermal
expansion between the gauge material and the test
material, the dependence of sensitivity on temperature
and the necessary compensation for thermal output. As
a result, the credibility of a high-temperature strain
gauge tends to be low. Therefore, high-temperature
strain measurement using non-contact, full-field optical
techniques is more appealing, as the above issues of
strain gauge technique can be avoided. In this work, a
typical non-interferometric optical technique, termed
digital image correlation (DIC), is used for high-
temperature strain measurement, which is notable for
its simple optical setup, easy experimental preparation
as well as the capability for providing non-contact, full-
field measurement of displacement and strain fields
with adjustable spatial and temporal resolution.8,9
It is noted that Turner and Russell10 were the first to
measure the full-field displacements and strains using
DIC at elevated temperatures. By using a muffle fur-
nace, they determined thermal strains and coefficients
of thermal expansion (CTE) of three metals at tempera-
tures to 600 °C. In their work, a white light source was
used to illuminate the specimen surface during image
recording. They realized that the charged coupled
device (CCD) camera was very sensitive to the infrared
radiation emitted by the heated specimen, and used an
infrared cut filter to reduce the infrared radiation.
Subsequently, in 1996, Lyons et al.11 used DIC to deter-
mine the thermally and mechanically induced stains of
the Inconel 718 alloy at temperatures up to 650 °C. In
their study, they observed that the visible thermal
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225
radiation of the specimen over 750 °C was brighter than
the illuminated white light source, and leaded to a fail-
ure of DIC analysis of the speckle pattern decorated on
the specimen surface. To deal with this problem, they
suggested using a brighter illuminator or filtering the
appropriate wavelengths of radiation for achieving
accurate measurements at even higher temperatures.
Recently, through the combined use of bandpass filters
and monochromatic light illumination, the issue of
intensifying thermal radiation emitted by a heated spe-
cimen at temperatures over 750 °C has been success-
fully solved. Various researchers, such as Grant et al.,12
Pan et al.13,14 and Novak and Zok,15 demonstrated that
two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D)
deformation can be measured by DIC at a temperature
much higher than 750 °C.
It is also noted that in most published works regard-
ing high-temperature deformation measurement using
DIC, a commercial or self-developed high-temperature
furnace equipped with an observation window was
employed to uniformly heat the sample to desired tem-
peratures. However, the limited size and the uniform
heating of a high-temperature chamber make it not a
suitable heating technique for hypersonic materials and
structures, which are featured for their relatively com-
plex and large shape and single-side heating. In this
work, in order to apply DIC to accurately measure
high-temperature strain of the materials and structures
in hypersonic flight vehicles in transient heating, an
infrared radiation heating system was designed to pro-
duce a transient thermal environment. A monochro-
matic lighting and bandpass filter imaging was also
established, which minimized the de-correlation of
speckle patterns caused by the thermal radiation and
oxidation of the heated test specimens. These enabled
reliable measurement of strain field of test specimens
under extreme high temperature. The performance of
the proposed active imaging DIC technique was veri-
fied by measuring the uniform thermal strains of a
chromium–nickel austenite stainless steel sample heated
from room temperature to 1300 °C, and the non-
uniform thermal strain fields of a woven C/SiC compo-
site at 1550 °C. The limitations and potential improve-
ments of the present technique are also discussed.
Experimental details
Infrared radiation heating using quartz lamps
The experimental setup of the established high-
temperature strain measuring system is shown in
Figure 1. Figure 1(a) illustrates the schematic of the
design, which consists of a tailor-made infrared radia-
tion heating device and a novel active imaging 2D-DIC
system. Figure 1(b) shows the actual scenarios of the
experiment. The heating lamps (schematically shown in
left part of Figure 1(a)) can heat the test specimen from
room temperature to a maximum transient temperature
of 1550 °C, approaching the softening temperature of
226
Figure 1. (a) Schematic diagram and (b) photograph of the high-temperature deformation measurement system based on infrared
heating and active imaging 2D-DIC system.
DIC: digital image correlation.
quartz glass. Note that a hollow water-cooled baffle
with polished surface is fixed just behind the quartz
lamps to reflect the radiation energy from back surface
to the test specimen for improving the utilization rate
of heat energy. Other components of the heating device
include a thermocouple, a signal amplifier, an
analogue-to-digital (A/D) converter, a digital-to-
analogue (D/A) converter and a control computer.
During an experiment, the surface temperature of a test
specimen is monitored by the thermocouple which is
mounted on the back side and/or front side of the spe-
cimen. The analogue temperature signal is amplified
and then transferred to digital signal via an A/D con-
verter. A program using the theory of fuzzy control16 is
compiled to control the temperature (digital signal) of
the test specimen to ensure that the temperature is kept
at a predefined level. Afterwards, the digital controlled
signal is converted to analogue signal, which activates
or deactivates the quartz lamps, and enables to main-
tain the temperature of the test specimen within a fluc-
tuation of 60.1 °C at a predefined level.
Active imaging DIC system
As an image-based optical metrology, DIC technique
generally comprises two steps: (1) digital image acquisi-
tion using an appropriate optical imaging system and
(2) digital image processing using a DIC program. In
principle, DIC can be directly extended for reliable and
accurate high-temperature displacement/strain mea-
surement provided that high-fidelity speckle images of
the test specimen with sufficient contrast can be
recorded at elevated temperatures. Although speckle
patterns that can sustain very high temperatures
(exceeding 1600 °C) can be fabricated readily using on-
the-shelf ceramic coating, it is non-trivial to record
high-fidelity speckle images that can faithfully reflect
the true deformation state of the test object. To do so,
there are two main issues need to be carefully
addressed. The first issue is the ‘de-correlation effect’
(i.e. brightness enhancement and contrast reduction) in
the images caused by the thermal radiation of a test
object and the heating system surrounding the test
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Journal of Strain Analysis 49(4)
Figure 2. Photograph of the established active imaging 2D-DIC
system based on monochromatic illumination and bandpass filter
imaging.
specimen. The second is the ‘heat haze effect’ (optical
distortion of the sample’s image) induced by the transi-
ent variations of the heated air’s refractive index.11,12
In conventional DIC applications, an ordinary ima-
ging system with white light illumination can be used.
This setup is simple and has already been widely used.
However, this system cannot work well when the test
sample is under high temperature over 600 °C.11,17
Under such conditions, significant thermal radiation
occurs, which will interfere the illumination light. As a
consequence, the image brightness tends to be satu-
rated, leading to a deteriorated image contrast and seri-
ous de-correlation between the recorded images. In
order to measure high-temperature strain reliably, it is
crucial to suppress the effect of high-temperature ther-
mal radiation, so that high-quality images with suffi-
cient brightness and contrast can be acquired. Recently,
a novel active imaging DIC system13,14 was established
by combining monochromatic illumination and band-
pass filter imaging. Figure 2 shows the active imaging
2D-DIC system, which consists of two self-developed
monochromatic sources, an optical bandpass filter,
an 8-bit 1280 3 1024 pixels digital CMOS camera
(1303UM, Daheng Image Co., Ltd, Beijing, China) and
a zoom lens (SL08551, AVENIR, f = 12.5–75 mm).
Different from all existing DIC systems using white
light illumination and an ordinary optical imaging
Pan et al.
system, a monochromatic blue light-emitting diode
(LED) light source, emitting at 450–455 nm, is
employed. It illuminates the test object surface from dif-
ferent orientations, producing an even and stable illu-
mination. In this high-temperature 2D-DIC system, a
bandpass filter is mounted in front of the imaging zoom
lens. The centre wavelength of this filter is at 450 6
3 nm. Its full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) value is
approximately 32 nm. By using this bandpass filter, the
actively illuminated monochromatic light is allowed to
arrive at the image sensor of the camera. Those ambient
lights which have a wavelength outside of the band-
width of the filter are filtered out. This means that only
limited portion of ambient light, within the bandwidth
of the filter, can pass through the filter. Since the inten-
sity of the thermal radiation that is within the band-
width of the filter is usually much lower than the
actively illuminated monochromatic light, high-quality
speckle images can be recorded even when a hot test
object at over 1200 °C emits dazzling visible light.
It is also worth noting that for conventional labora-
tory applications or harsh outdoor environments, the
active imaging DIC method is also preferable, because
image noise due to ambient light variations can also be
effectively suppressed;18 thus, a high accuracy in displa-
cement or strain measurement can be expected.
Considering its extended application scope and
improved measurement accuracy, the proposed DIC
method using active optical imaging system is highly
recommended for practical use instead of the conven-
tional DIC method using an ordinary optical imaging
system. More details of the established active imaging
2D-DIC system and its extension to 3D-DIC system
can be found in Pan et al.14
Experimental procedure
During the experiment, the specimen was placed verti-
cally on the specimen stage approximately 200 mm
away from the quartz lamps of the infrared radiation
heating device, as shown in Figure 1(a) and (b). The
specimen was illuminated uniformly by an array of
monochromatic light sources with the same emitting
wavelength. White light speckle granules made from
commercial high-temperature ceramics coating which
can sustain a temperature up to 1800 °C were decorated
on the specimen surface. Experimental tests showed
that this speckle pattern does not change its shape and
colour at a high temperature up to 1550 °C. After speci-
men positioning, the focal length and F-number of the
zoom lenses were carefully adjusted such that surface
images of the test specimen with sufficient contrast can
be obtained. When test starts, the infrared radiation
heating system will automatically heat the sample
according to a predefined temperature curve. In the
meantime, the camera is triggered at a predefined time
interval (2 s in the following two experiments). The
camera in trigger mode will automatically save a digital
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227
image after an exposure time of 60 ms when a high-level
trigger signal is received.
Incremental reliability-guided DIC
method
Generally, the active imaging DIC system mentioned
above can effectively suppress thermal radiation of a
heated sample at a temperature up to 1200 °C.
However, when temperature exceeds 1200 °C, the qual-
ity of digital images recorded using the active imaging
systems also tends to decrease. In this work, to further
improve the applicability of DIC techniques, a robust
reliability-guided (RG) displacement tracking algo-
rithm we proposed recently19 was improved by introdu-
cing an automatic reference image updating scheme.
The flowchart of improved RG displacement tracking
algorithm is shown in Figure 3. The technique was pre-
viously proposed to deal with the de-correlation effect
occurred in a large deformation experiment.20 In this
work, it is employed to address the de-correlation effect
in high-temperature tests. However, this algorithm
requires good speckle images with sufficient sampling
rate. In conventional applications, this requirement can
be readily satisfied by fully taking advantage of the
frame rate of the camera used. For DIC application
under high temperature, it is assumed that there is no
significant de-correlation effect between two consecu-
tive images. Under this condition, the procedure of
incremental RG displacement tracking based on an
automatic reference image updating scheme is briefly
described as follows.
First, prior to image correlation analysis, a seed point
is designated in the original reference image, which is
subsequently searched out in the ith (i . 1) deformed
image using an automatic integer displacement searching
scheme (ideally, the seed point should be placed in the
centre area of the image, which is expected to have mini-
mal displacement during the test). The integer displace-
ment searching leads to displacements with an accuracy
Figure 3. Flowchart of reliability-guided displacement tracking
algorithm using an automatic reference image updating scheme.
228
of 1 pixel and the correlation coefficient of the seed
point.
Then, to ensure a reliable matching during the search
process, a correlation threshold of 0.8 is used to judge
whether the seed point has been correctly tracked in the
ith deformed image. When the correlation coefficient of
the seed point is greater than this threshold, it is deemed
that no serious de-correlation effect is present. A robust
displacement tracking algorithm guided by the correla-
tion coefficients of computed points (also referred to as
a RG-DIC algorithm, see Pan19) is then employed to
correlate the rest of the interested points to obtain the
displacement fields of the ith image, that is, di ðx, yÞ.
However, when the correlation coefficient of the seed
point is below the threshold, it implies serious de-
correlation exists. In this case, the (i 2 1)th deformed
image is taken as the updated reference image.
Next, since the coordinates of the interrogated points
in the updated reference image tend to be at sub-pixel
positions, intensity interpolation (e.g. bicubic interpola-
tion) has to be performed to calculate intensities of the
interrogated points in the updated reference image.
Then the RG-DIC is carried out to determine the incre-
mental displacement vectors (denoted by Ddj,i21(x, y))
between the new reference image (i.e. (i 2 1)th deformed
image) and the jth (j5i) deformed image. The displace-
ment vector of each interrogated point (relative to its
location in the original reference image) can therefore be
calculated by accumulating the incremental displacement
vector
dj ðx, yÞ = di1 ðx, yÞ + Ddj, i1 ðx, yÞ
where the subscript j denotes the jth deformed image,
and Ddj,i21(x, y) is the computed incremental displace-
ment vector at position (x, y) between the jth image and
(i21)th image.
From the procedure described above and the flow-
chart illustrated in Figure 3, it is clear that the reference
image updating scheme not only automatically
rechoose the reference image to ensure reliable correla-
tion for de-correlated images, but also has a capability
of updating the reference image with minimal numbers.
Thus, the cumulated displacement error associated with
sub-pixel reconstruction in the new reference image can
be minimized. After the discrete displacement field is
determined, a pointwise least squares algorithm can be
used to further differentiate the displacement fields to
obtain the strain maps.
Experiments
Homogeneous deformation measurement of
Ni-based alloy up to 1300 °C
In order to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the
established active imaging DIC system for high-
temperature strain measurement, a plane specimen
(dimension 100 3 100 3 2 mm3) made of chromium–
nickel austenite stainless steel (Material type No
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Journal of Strain Analysis 49(4)
1Cr18Ni9Ti) was produced. The pre-oxidized specimen
decorated with white high-temperature speckle patterns
was placed vertically on a sample stage without any
external constraint. Because the size of the quartz lamp
array (300 3 300 mm2) used to heating the sample was
3 times larger than the test sample, homogeneous ther-
mal deformation was assumed for the sample when it
was heated to various temperatures using radiation
heating.
It should be noted that prior to high-temperature
experiments, static tests in common environment are
needed to be performed to examine the accuracy of
strain measurement by the same active imaging system
and DIC algorithm. During the static test, surface
images of the sample were recorded every 2 s. The
image acquisition lasted for 180 s, and a total of 91
images were recorded. The initially recorded image was
used as the reference image, and the rest were treated as
the deformed images. These deformed images were then
compared with the reference image to extract full-field
strains. As the actual strains of the sample are 0, the
measured strains reflect the accuracy and precision of
the imaging system. In order to minimize the errors due
to camera’s self-heating, the digital camera was pre-
heated 2 h before image acquisition as suggested by Ma
et al.21 The average values and standard deviations of
the normal and shear strain components are plotted as
a function of the recording time, as shown in Figure 4.
It is seen that these statistical values are almost con-
stant, and estimated as 16 6 38 me for ex, 8 6 40 me for
ð1Þ ey and 3 6 23 me for gxy, respectively, confirming the
accuracy and precision of the established system for
strain measurement in conventional environments.
Afterwards, the specimen was heated from 70 °C to
1300 °C with a heating speed of approximately 15 °C/s
by quartz lamps. During radiation heating, the images
Figure 4. Average (symbols) and standard deviations (error
bars) of the measured virtual normal and engineering shear
strains using the established active imaging 2D-DIC systems in a
stationary experiment.
DIC: digital image correlation.
Pan et al.
Figure 5. (a–d) Images of the specimen surface captured by
the proposed active imaging system at various temperatures; (e)
A photo of the specimen surface at 1300 °C; and (f) the emitted
radiation energy of the heated specimen predicted by Planck’s
law and average brightness of the recorded images at various
temperatures.
and the corresponding temperature values on the front
and back side of the heated specimen were recorded
every 2 s. A total of 90 deformed images were recorded.
Figure 5(a)–(d) shows four images captured by the
active imaging DIC system at temperatures of 601.1 °C,
803.6 °C, 1113.6 °C and 1299.2 °C, respectively. For
comparison purpose, Figure 5(e) shows a photograph
of the specimen surface over 1200 °C captured by a
common colour digital camera without a bandpass fil-
ter. It is clear that the hot specimen at 1200 °C emits
bright red light, making the details of the speckle pat-
tern indiscernible by a common camera or naked eyes.
It is seen from these experimental images that the shape
and brightness of the white speckle granules are almost
unchanged, whereas the brightness of the black region
changes significantly due to thermal radiation. Thus,
the black region can be considered as a perfect emitter,
while the white speckle granules can be treated as per-
fect reflection, confirming the assumptions made in
Novak and Zok.15Figure 5(f) plots the radiation energy
at the wavelength of 450 nm predicted by Planck’s law
and average brightness estimated from the experimental
images at various temperatures. Clearly, these two
curves have similar trends. This means that when the
temperature of the specimen exceeds 1000 °C, both
radiation energy and the average brightness increase
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229
Figure 6. Measured displacement vector field caused by
thermal deformation of the chromium–nickel austenite stainless
steel sample at various temperatures: (a) 601.1 °C, (b) 803.6 °C,
(c) 1113.6 °C and (d) 1299.2 °C. The superimposed contour
lines denote the magnitude of the displacement vectors.
markedly. When temperature is over 1100 °C, de-
correlation occurred in the recorded image, as shown in
Figure 5(c) and (d). However, the deformation field can
still be determined using the robust incremental RG-
DIC algorithm.
The images recorded in the high-temperature test
were then processed using the incremental RG-DIC
algorithm and pointwise least squares strain estimation
algorithm described above to extract the displacement
and strain components at each calculation point.
Specifically, regularly spaced 14490 (=115 3 126) dis-
crete pixel points were analysed using a 41 3 41 pixels
subset and a grid step of 10 pixels. Figure 6 shows the
displacement vectors due to thermal expansion. The
superimposed contour lines in the figure denote the
magnitudes of the radial displacement vectors, which
demonstrate that the thermal expansion is homoge-
neous. Note that the rigid body translation and rota-
tion of the test specimen occurred during thermal
expansion have been removed from Figure 6 to high-
light the underlying thermal deformation. Specifically,
rigid body translation of the specimen can be estimated
by directly averaging the x and y displacement compo-
nents, while rigid body rotation can be determined by
fitting the two displacement fields with linear planes,
about which more details can be found in our previous
work.22 It is evident from Figure 6 that the fluctuations
in displacement contours are more pronounced for the
images recorded at elevated temperatures, indicating a
decreased strain precision.
To determine the local strain components at each
point of interest, a pointwise least squares algorithm
using bilinear functions (i.e. uðx, yÞ = a0 + a1 x +
a2 y + a3 xy, vðx, yÞ = b0 + b1 x + b2 y + b3 xy ) was
230 Journal of Strain Analysis 49(4)

same, demonstrating the homogeneous nature of the

deformation field of the specimen. It should be noted
that the standard deviation of the measured strains
increases with the increase of temperature. The signifi-
cant decrease in strain measurement precision is due to
the ‘de-correlation effect’ of the images as well as the
local variations in refractive index of the heated air in
the optical path. Further work is required to address
these issues.

Non-homogeneous high-temperature strain

Figure 7. Average (symbols) and standard deviations (error
bars) of the measurement normal strains at various
temperatures.
performed over the u and v displacement fields com-
prising 15 3 15 calculation points (corresponds to a
140 3 140 pixels local region). Subsequently, strain
components along the x and y directions, ex and ey,
were calculated using the fitted coefficients. The aver-
age and standard deviation of the thermal strain was
also determined. Figure 7 shows the average and stan-
dard deviations of ex and ey as a function of the applied
temperatures. The two normal strains are almost the
measurement of C/SiC composite at 1550 °C
The surface deformation of a C/SiC woven composite
material sample was also measured, which demon-
strated the capability of the proposed active imaging
DIC technique for non-homogeneous high-temperature
strain measurement. In this experiment, surface images
of the C/SiC composite material sample at temperatures
from 70 °C to 1550 °C were recorded using the estab-
lished active imaging DIC system. Figure 8 shows six
sample images captured at various temperatures. It is
clear that when the temperature exceeded 1400 °C, the
radiated light within the bandpass range of the optical
bandpass filter increased sharply, resulting in a sudden
increase in the overall brightness and a decrease in the
image contrast. However, with the aid of the aforemen-
tioned automatic reference image updating strategy and
the robust RG-DIC algorithm, surface strains of the

Figure 8. Surface images of C/SiC composite material specimen at various temperatures: (a) 70.0 °C, (b) 1008.5 °C, (c) 1329.4 °C,
(d) 1409.6 °C, (e) 1526.1 °C and (f) 1550.0 °C. It is clear that when temperature exceeds 1400 °C, the radiated light within the
bandpass range of the optical bandpass filter is greatly increased, resulting in a sudden increase of overall brightness and a decrease
in image contrast.

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Pan et al.
Figure 9. (a) Measured x-directional normal strain field of C/SiC composite plate at 1550 °C and (b) measured strain profiles along
a horizontal line at various temperatures over 1550.0 °C.
C/SiC composite material sample at 1550 °C was also
measured for the specified region of interest (ROI), as
shown in Figure 9(a). The periodical distributions of
the measured strain were in good agreement with the
practical periodic structure of the wave structure, which
validated the feasibility of the proposed active imaging
DIC system for inhomogeneous deformation at
extremely high temperatures. Also, it is interesting to
mention that, in this experiment, we observed that the
amplitude of the periodically distributed ex strain
increases with the temperature, when the temperature is
below 1000 °C. However, the strain amplitudes decrease
with the increase of temperature when the temperature
is over 1000°C. Figure 9(b) shows the variations of the
strains along a horizontal line at temperatures over
1000 °C. This peculiar phenomenon may be caused by
the warp deformation of the sample. In this case, the
active imaging 3D-DIC system14 that is capable of mea-
suring all the three displacement components, or a 2D-
DIC system using a well-designed high-quality bilateral
telecentric lens23 that is insensitive to out-of-plane dis-
placement of test sample may be preferable choices for
providing more accurate strain measurements.
Conclusion and discussion
An easy-to-implement but effective non-contacting
high-temperature strain measuring technique based on
a combination of active imaging and DIC is introduced
in this article. By combining a narrow bandpass optical
filter with monochromatic light source, high-quality
digital images with minimal de-correlation effect of a
hot object at extremely high temperature can be
acquired. These images are then processed by a robust
incremental RG-DIC algorithm to extract the full-field
deformation. The feasibility and applicability of this
high-temperature strain measurement technique are
validated by laboratory experiments. Experimental
results indicated that the proposed active imaging DIC
is capable of measuring full-field deformation at tem-
peratures ranging from room temperature to 1550 °C.
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231
However, the precision of strain measurement at high
temperature is lower than that at low temperature.
In the work reported here, digital images of the front
surface of the specimen were recorded while the speci-
men was heated from the back side by quartz lamps.
We found that heat haze has negligible influence on
DIC measurements when the specimen was positioned
vertically with its surface perpendicular to the optical
axis of the camera. However, to accurately measure the
strains of directly heated surface, for example, the
quartz lamps and the imaging system are placed on the
same side of the heated sample surface, the local varia-
tions in refractive index of heated air may be a primary
challenge to achieve accurate measurement and must
be carefully considered. Techniques such as using an
air knife and image averaging with the aid of a high-
speed camera,15,24 can be potentially used to address
this issues. Further work on this aspect is ongoing and
will be reported later.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant nos
11002012, 11172026, 11272032, 91216301, and
11322220), the Program for New Century Excellent
Talents in University (Grant no. NCET-12-0023),
China Aerospace Science and Technology Innovation
Fund Project (Grant no. CASC201101), and
Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (Grant no.
2011ZD51043).
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