An Optical Imaging System to Characterize Mechanical Deformation at Microscopic Length Scale

Additive Manufacturing Innovations LLC (AM-Innov) in collaboration with Clarkson University and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) proposes a new optical imaging system to characterize microscopic deformation of materials. The system, named as a Mechanical Testing at Microscale system (MT@micro), uses a micro-tensile testing device to mechanically load the specimen uniaxially and an optical imaging platform to capture high resolution, in-situ images of the evolution of heterogeneous deformation on the specimen surface for a large global strain. Such an enormousadvancement in the characterization capabilities could be achieved by addressing the fundamental challenges of the state-of-the-art technology, primarily the narrow depth of field of the microscope, large rigid body motion of the field of view, and lack of a data processing algorithms to extract critical engineering data from a large number of image frames. MT@micro will have three innovative solutions to address these challenges: 1) a smart imaging subsystem, 2) a features detection and tracking subsystem, and 3) a material modeling subsystem. Solutions will be developedfollowing an interdisciplinary approach. The proposed system is expected to advance the mechanical characterization at microscale with an optical imaging technique into a robust material design and development tool.