Measurement of Sub-micron Deformations and Stresses at Microsecond Intervals in Laterally Impacted Composite Plates Using Digital Gradient Sensing

Abstract

Visualization and quantification of surface topography and stresses from measured slope data is of considerable importance to study many engineering problems including response of structural plates to stress wave loading. In this work, a full-field optical technique called Digital Gradient Sensing (DGS) is implemented in the reflection-mode to quantify time-resolved surface slopes in composite plates at microsecond intervals as they are impact loaded. The method being capable of determining two orthogonal surface slopes by measuring angular deflections of light rays, as small as a few micro-radians, surface topography can be quantified using a Higher-order Finite-difference-based Least-squares Integration (HFLI). Numerical differentiation of surface slopes, on the other hand, provides all three curvatures enabling estimation of stresses. Carbon fiber reinforced composite plates of different layups are subjected to dynamic impact loading using a Hopkinson pressure bar. Ultrahigh-speed digital photography is used to record deformations using DGS. The out-of-plane deformations are obtained by post-processing data from DGS at each time instant using HFLI whereas stresses are estimated by evaluating instantaneous curvatures obtained by differentiating measured slopes.