Advanced video extensometer for non-contact, real-time, high-accuracy strain measurement

We developed an advanced video extensometer for non-contact, real-time, high-accuracy strain measurement in material testing. In the established video extensometer, a "near perfect and ultra-stable" imaging system, combining the idea of active imaging with a high-quality bilateral telecentric lens, is constructed to acquire high-fidelity video images of the test sample surface, which is invariant to ambient lighting changes and small out-of-plane motions occurred between the object surface and image plane. In addition, an efficient and accurate inverse compositional Gauss-Newton algorithm incorporating a temporal initial guess transfer scheme and a high-accuracy interpolation method is employed to achieve real-time, high-accuracy displacement tracking with negligible bias error. Tensile tests of an aluminum sample and a carbon fiber filament sample were performed to demonstrate the efficiency, repeatability and accuracy of the developed advanced video extensometer. The results indicate that longitudinal and transversal strains can be estimated and plotted at a rate of 117 fps and with a maximum strain error less than 30 microstrains.