Spatial-temporal subset based digital image correlation considering the temporal continuity of deformation

An improved digital image correlation (DIC) scheme termed spatial-temporal subset-based DIC (STS-DIC) that incorporates the temporal continuity of deformation is proposed. Provided that displacement at a certain physical point on a specimen in several successive frames is temporally continuous and can be expressed as a linear relationship over time, the STS-DIC scheme is constructed between the reference subset and spatial-temporal deformed subset consisting of several subsets from a period of successive frames. The proposed method is verified by simulated speckle images and experimental tests featuring different types of deformation. Compared to the traditional subset-based DIC, the STS-DIC proposed in this paper takes advantage of noise suppression so as to improve the accuracy, especially for speckle images with larger noise. More importantly, it is found that the computational demand of STS-DIC is much lower than that of mesh-based (global) DIC incorporating the temporal continuity, despite achieving comparable accuracy. Therefore, STS-DIC is expected to be useful as a practical and flexible tool in complex-environment measurements with low signal-to-noise-ratio speckle images.