In polycrystalline metallic materials, quantitative and statistical assessment of the plasticity in relation to the microstructure is necessary to understand the deformation processes during mechanical loading. Plastic deformation often localizes into physical slip bands at the sub-grain scale. Detrimental microstructural configurations that result in the formation and evolution of slip bands during loading require advanced strain mapping techniques for the identification of these atomically sharp discontinuities. A new discontinuity-tolerant DIC method, Heaviside-DIC, has been developed to account for discontinuities in the displacement field. Displacement fields have been measured at the scale of the physical slip bands over large areas in nickel-based superalloys by high resolution scanning electron microscopy digital image correlation (SEM DIC). However, conventional DIC methods cannot quantitatively measure plastic localization in the presence of discontinuous kinematic fields such as those produced by slip bands. The Heaviside-DIC technique can autonomously detect discontinuities, providing information about their location, inclination, and identify slip systems (in combination with orientation mapping). Using Heaviside-DIC, discontinuities are physically evaluated as sharp shear-localization events, allowing for the quantitative measure of strain amplitude nearby the discontinuities. Measurements using the new Heaviside-DIC technique are compared to conventional DIC methods for identical materials and imaging conditions.

The recent development of the high resolution and discontinuity-tolerant digital image correlation technique enables the extraction of discontinuities within a displacement field. The technique provides quantitative analysis of discontinuities arising from slip, shear bands, cracks, and grain boundary sliding in a variety of material systems, including polycrystalline metallic materials. The discontinuity-tolerant digital image correlation method can be implemented to retrieve not only quantitative discontinuity analysis but also the local strain and rotation fields that operate near these discontinuities. The present implementation includes high-resolution digital image correlation (HR-DIC) measurements collected in a scanning electron microscope for analysis of both the plastic and elastic fields that develop during deformation of polycrystalline metallic materials. The combination of the discontinuity-tolerant DIC technique with the computation of internal gradients enables extraction of non-localized strain and rotation fields during plastic deformation of a nickel-based superalloy. Therefore the lattice rotation/expansion and plastic localization that occur during deformation can be determined in a single experiment. This method is validated using synthetic images with preset deformation, and experimental measurements using the electron back scatter diffraction (EBSD) technique.

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