Aerospace Engineering

Background: Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is a full-field optical metrology technique widely used for characterising the mechanical properties of materials. Specialist knowledge is required for accurate and trustworthy results, even with simple structures. Therefore, DIC is restricted to expert practitioners and requires extensive experience to become proficient, which restricts its application and decreases researchers' effectiveness. Aim: The PhD aims to create a methodology for virtual simulation of DIC experiments on complex composite structures that embody optical ambiguity and inhomogeneous mechanical effects. Purpose: The research will evaluate the effectiveness of virtual simulation as a tool for both uncertainty estimation and design of experiments. Novel software tools will be developed that enable the comparison of results from virtual and physical testing that incorporate complex geometry specimen setups and the consequent effects of optical distortions. What's New: Multiphysics effects have not been modelled before in DIC. Data fusion for DIC is not well-understood; the interactions between different parts of experimental systems are not well-understood and the effects of different setups on the generated data is not well-characterised. The project will demonstrate new methodologies for characterising these effects. Outcome: The PhD will exploit to full potential the non-contact and full-field nature of DIC, making it a more industrially relevant tool for large scale evaluations. It will increase the accuracy and reliability of material characterisations and enable practitioners to fuse the full-field data sets with complex models. This will increase the effectiveness of DIC for researchers, paving the way for more effective data fusion within experimental mechanics.