Thermal Strain Measurement of Austin Stainless Steel (SS304) during a Heating-cooling Process

In this study, measurement of thermophysical properties of materials at high temperatures was performed. This experiment employed a heater device to heat the material to a high temperature. The images of the specimen surface due to thermal load at various temperatures were recorded using charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras. Afterwards, the full-field thermal deformation of the specimen was determined using the digital image correlation (DIC) method. The capability and accuracy of the proposed technique are verified by two experiments: (1) thermal deformation and strain measurement of a stainless steel specimen that was heated to 590 ℃ and (2) thermal expansion and thermal contraction measurements of specimen in the process of heating and cooling. This research focused on two goals: first, obtaining the temperature dependence of the coefficient of thermal expansion, which can be used as data input for finite element simulation; and second, investigating the capability of the DIC method in measuring full-field thermal deformation and strain. The results of the measured coefficient of thermal expansion were close to the values available in the handbook. The measurement results were in good agreement with finite element method simulation results. The results reveal that DIC is an effective and accurate technique for measuring fullfield high-temperature thermal strain in engineering fields such as aerospace engineering.