Combined thermographic phosphor and digital image correlation (TP + DIC) for simultaneous temperature and strain measurements

Thermographic phosphors (TP) are combined with stereo digital image correlation (DIC) in a novel diagnostic, TP + DIC, to measure full‐field surface strains and temperatures simultaneously. The TP + DIC method is presented, including corrections for nonlinear CMOS camera detectors and generation of pixel‐wise calibration curves to relate the known temperature to the ratio of pixel intensities between two distinct wavelength bands. Additionally, DIC is employed not only for strain measurements but also for accurate image registration between the two cameras for the two‐colour ratio method approach of phosphoric thermography. TP + DIC is applied to characterize the thermo‐mechanical response of 304L stainless steel dog bones during tensile testing at different strain rates. The dog bones are patterned for DIC with Mg3F2GeO4:Mn (MFG) via aerosol deposition through a shadow mask. Temperatures up to 425°K (150°C) and strains up to 1.0 mm/mm are measured in the localized necking region, with conservative noise levels of 10°K and 0.01 mm/mm or less. Finally, TP + DIC is compared to the more established method of combining infrared (IR) thermography with DIC (IR + DIC), with results agreeing favourably. Three topics of continued research are identified, including cracking of the aerosol‐deposited phosphor DIC features, incomplete illumination for pixels on the border of the phosphor features, and phosphor emission evolution as a function of applied substrate strain. This work demonstrates the combination of phosphor thermography and DIC and lays the foundation for further development of TP + DIC for testing in combined thermo‐mechancial environments.