Measurements of plastic localization by heaviside-digital image correlation

Abstract In polycrystalline metallic materials, quantitative and statistical assessment of the plasticity in relation to the microstructure is necessary to understand the deformation processes during mechanical loading. Plastic deformation often localizes into physical slip bands at the sub-grain scale. Detrimental microstructural configurations that result in the formation and evolution of slip bands during loading require advanced strain mapping techniques for the identification of these atomically sharp discontinuities. A new discontinuity-tolerant DIC method, Heaviside-DIC, has been developed to account for discontinuities in the displacement field. Displacement fields have been measured at the scale of the physical slip bands over large areas in nickel-based superalloys by high resolution scanning electron microscopy digital image correlation (SEM DIC). However, conventional DIC methods cannot quantitatively measure plastic localization in the presence of discontinuous kinematic fields such as those produced by slip bands. The Heaviside-DIC technique can autonomously detect discontinuities, providing information about their location, inclination, and identify slip systems (in combination with orientation mapping). Using Heaviside-DIC, discontinuities are physically evaluated as sharp shear-localization events, allowing for the quantitative measure of strain amplitude nearby the discontinuities. Measurements using the new Heaviside-DIC technique are compared to conventional DIC methods for identical materials and imaging conditions.