Standards for Validating Stress Analyses by Integrating Simulation and Experimentation

Abstract

A reference material and a series of standardized tests have already been developed for respectively calibrating and evaluating optical systems employed for measuring in-plane static strain (for draft standard see: www.twa26.org). New work has commenced on the design of a reference material (RM) for use with instruments or systems capable of measuring three-dimensional displacements and strains during dynamic events. The rational decision-making process is being utilized and the initial stages have been completed, i.e. the identification and weighting of attributes for the design, brain-storming candidate designs and evaluation of candidate designs against the attributes. Twenty-five attributes have been identified and seven selected as being essential in any successful design, namely: the boundary conditions must be reproducible; a range of in-plane and out-of-plane displacement values must be present inside the field of view; the RM must be robust and portable; there is a means of verifying the performance in situ; and for cyclic loading it must be possible to extract data throughout the cycle. More than thirty candidate designs were generated and have been reduced to nine viable designs for further evaluation. In parallel with this effort to design a reference material, work is also in progress to optimize methodologies for conducting analyses via both simulations and experiments. Image decomposition methods are being explored as a means to making quantitative comparisons full-field data maps from simulations and experiments in order to provide a comprehensive validation procedure.