Background: The goal of the present study is to illustrate the full integration of sensor and imaging data into numerical procedures for the purpose of identification of constitutive laws and their validation. The feasibility of such approaches is proven in the context of in situ tests monitored by tomography. The bridging tool consists of spatiotemporal (i.e., 4D) analyses with dedicated (integrated) correlation algorithms. Methods: A tensile test on nodular graphite cast iron sample is performed within a lab tomograph. The reconstructed volumes are registered via integrated digital volume correlation (DVC) that incorporates a finite element modeling of the test, thereby performing a mechanical integration in 4D registration of a series of 3D images. In the present case a non-intrusive procedure is developed in which the 4D sensitivity fields are obtained with a commercial finite element code, allowing for a large versatility in meshing and incorporation of complex constitutive laws. Convergence studies can thus be performed in which the quality of the discretization is controlled both for the simulation and the registration. Results: Incremental DVC analyses are carried out with the scans acquired during the in situ mechanical test. For DVC, the mesh size results from a compromise between measurement uncertainties and its spatial resolution. Conversely, a numerically good mesh may reveal too fine for the considered material microstructure. With the integrated framework proposed herein, 4D registrations can be performed and missing boundary conditions of the reference state as well as mechanical parameters of an elastoplastic constitutive law are determined in fair condition both for DVC and simulation.

SUMMARYRobust global/goal-oriented error estimation is used nowadays to control the approximate finite element solutions obtained from simulation. In the context of Computational Mechanics, the construction of admissible stress fields (i.e. stress tensors which verify the equilibrium equations) is required to set up strict and guaranteed error bounds (using residual based error estimators) and plays an important role in the quality of the error estimates. This work focuses on the different procedures used in the calculation of admissible stress fields, which is a crucial and technically complicated point. The three main techniques that currently exist, called the element equilibration technique (EET), the star-patch equilibration technique (SPET), and the element equilibration + starpatch technique (EESPT), are investigated and compared with respect to three different criteria, namely the quality of associated error estimators, computational cost and easiness of practical implementation into commercial finite element codes.The numerical results which are presented focus on industrial problems; they highlight the main advantages and drawbacks of the different methods and show that the behavior of the three estimators, which have the same convergence rate as the exact global error, is consistent. Two-and three-dimensional experiments have been carried out in order to compare the performance and the computational cost of the three different approaches. The analysis of the results reveals that the SPET is more accurate than EET and EESPT methods, but the corresponding computational cost is higher. Overall, the numerical tests prove the interest of the hybrid method EESPT and show that it is a correct compromise between quality of the error estimate, practical implementation and computational cost. Furthermore, the influence of the cost function involved in the EET and the EESPT is studied in order to optimize the estimators.