Determination of three-dimensional displacement using two-dimensional digital image correlation

A novel method that uses a two-dimensional (2D) digital image correlation (DIC) based on a single CCD camera to measure three-dimensional (3D) displacement and deformation is proposed. Rigid-body displacement in 3D space consists of both in-plane and out-of-plane components. The presence of an in-plane displacement component results in a shift of the center of the image displacement vector, while the slope of the image displacement vector is related to the out-of-plane displacement component. Global DIC is employed to determine the displaced position of each point on an object based on a linear distribution characteristic of the displacement vector. Speckle images with deformation introduced by 3D displacement are generated to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method. In the 3D rigid-body displacement, both in-plane and out-of-plane displacement components are separated by determining the intercept and slope of the image displacement vector. In the 3D deformation, a zero order displacement (pure rigid-body displacement) mode is assumed in a small subset of pixels. Simulated and experimental results demonstrate that both in-plane and out-of-plane displacements can be accurately retrieved using the proposed method.