Curvature Monitoring of Beams Using Digital Image Correlation

Abstract

A method for measuring longitudinal strains with the height at a section, and thus the curvature, using a technique based on digital image correlation (DIC), is presented. The background to this technique is introduced as well as previous work in this area. The accuracy of DIC under ideal conditions is established using artificially generated images that represent beams with various curvatures. The practical accuracy of DIC is established by comparing the strains measured using DIC to those predicted by elastic theory and measured using strain gauges for a steel beam. The correlation between these results is found to be excellent. DIC is then used to measure curvatures in RC beams and these results are compared with analytically predicted results with good agreement. The choice of an appropriate gauge length for RC is discussed and is shown to be one of the significant advantages of using DIC as opposed to strain gauges in both laboratory testing and field monitoring of bridge structures.