Advances in experimental mechanics by the synergetic combination of full-field measurement techniques and computational tools

•The effective exploitation of full-field measurements is addressed.•Beneficial fallouts arising from the coupling of complementary investigation tools in experimental and computational mechanics are analyzed.•Model reduction provisions supporting real-time simulation of experiments involving complex phenomena are revised.

The continuous improvement of full-field measurement techniques has fostered the development of mechanical testing procedures of increasing complexity. Contemporarily, the design of the experiments and the interpretation of acquired data benefit of the realism of available numerical models and of the enhanced effectiveness of several computing tools. Advances achievable by the synergetic coupling of experimental and computational mechanics are illustrated in this contribution with the aid of some selected applications.