Quantitative strain analysis of the large deformation at the scale of microstructure: comparison between Digital Image Correlation and Microgrid techniques

A comparative study has been carried out to assess the accuracy of the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique for the quantification of large strains in the microstructure of an Interstitial Free (IF) steel used in automotive applications. A microgrid technique has been used in this study in order to validate independently the strain measurements obtained with DIC. Microgrids with a pitch of 5 microns were printed on the etched microstructure of the IF steel to measure the local in-plane strain distribution during a tensile test carried out in a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The progressive deformation of the microstructure with microgrids has been recorded throughout the test as a sequence of micrographs and subsequently processed using DIC to quantify the distribution of local strain values. Strain maps obtained with the two techniques have been compared in order to assess the accuracy of the DIC measurements obtained using the natural patterns of the revealed microstructure in the SEM micrographs. The results obtained with the two techniques are qualitatively similar and thus, demonstrate the reliability of DIC applied to microstructures, even after large deformations in excess of 0.7. However, an average error of about 16 % was found in the strain values calculated using DIC.