Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 30 (9) (2016) 4363~4372

www.springerlink.com/content/1738-494x(Print)/1976-3824(Online)

DOI 10.1007/s12206-016-0750-0

Thermal interaction of a circular plate-ring structure using digital image correlation

technique and infrared heating system
Vinh Tung Le1, Ngoc San Ha1, Tailie Jin1, Nam Seo Goo1,* and Jae Young Kim2
1

Smart Microsystem Research Laboratory, Department of Advanced Technology Fusion, Division of Interdisciplinary Studies, Konkuk University,
120 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 143-701, Korea
2
Agency for Defense Development, The 1st R&D institute-2, Yuseong P.O. Box 35, Daejeon 305-600, Korea
(Manuscript Received November 3, 2015; Revised March 31, 2016; Accepted April 12, 2016)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract
During the high speed flight of vehicles, the thermal behavior and interactions of structures in a high-temperature environment are important for thermal-structural design. In this research, the thermal interaction behavior of a circular aluminum plate inside a stainless steel
ring was investigated at temperature up to 550C using a non-contact and full-field high-temperature deformation measurement method.
This study uses an infrared radiation heating system to create a high-temperature operation environment. The techniques were developed
and implemented in a radiation heating facility, enabling non-contact displacement, strain measurements through Digital image correlation (DIC) technique. The images of the structure surface due to thermal load at various temperatures were recorded with Chargedcoupled device cameras. Afterwards, full-field thermal deformation of the sample was determined with DIC technique. Finally, finite
element analysis was used to calculate high-temperature deformation of the circular plate-ring structure. The results of the experiment
were close to the simulation results. In addition, the process of both heating-up and cooling-down was also considered to examine the
recoverable characteristic of the structure. The results show the efficacy of DIC in achieving such measurements at high-temperatures.
Keywords: Thermal deformation; Digital image correlation (DIC); Finite element method (FEM); Thermal stresses; Thermal interaction
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction
High-speed vehicles have to withstand very high aerodynamic heating and pressure loads during ascent and flight
processes. In hypersonic speeds, aero-thermal heating raises
temperatures, which in turn affects elastic properties such as
decreasing Youngs modulus, ultimately reducing the capability of the material to handle aerodynamic loads, the allowable
stress and the time-dependent phenomenon. Thermal stresses
then become important factors due to thermal expansion or
thermal contraction, and they induce many problems such as
dimension changes in the buckling loads and the flutter behavior [1]. Therefore, the thermal stress caused by hightemperature interactions of hot structures should be investigated to address these problems.
The high-temperature behaviors of a structure have been
investigated experimentally by many researchers. Anwander
et al. [2] presented a non-contacting strain measurement at a
temperature of 1200C with the digital laser speckle technique. A measurement of the thermal strain of pure platinum
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 450 4133, Fax.: +82 2 444 7091
E-mail address: nsgoo@konkuk.ac.kr

Recommended by Associate Editor Chang Yong Park

KSME & Springer 2016

at ultra-temperatures was also carried out using a video extensometer [3]. A thermo-mechanical model of bearing was
proposed to see the effect of bearing temperature on the stiffness [4]. There have been a number of non-contact optical
measurement methods proposed to characterize materials at
high temperatures such as the laser speckle correlation [5], Xray diffraction [6], electronic speckle pattern interferometry
[7], and the digital image correlation (DIC) technique [8-20]
or infrared image correlation [14]. Compared to the other
methods, the DIC technique offers many advantages such as
a simple experimental set-up, full-field measurement, a large
strain measurement [20, 21], a high strain-gradient region
[19], and rigid body motion elimination [22], insensitivity to
vibrations, arbitrary specimen size [23] and easy preparation
of specimens.
Due to the many advantages, researchers have used DIC
techniques to measure thermal deformation. Lyons et al. assessed the capability of the two-dimensional (2-D) computervision method based on DIC technique to measure full-field
and in-plane surface deformations of Incoloy 909 and Inconel
718 super alloy at evaluated temperatures up to 650C [9].
The 2-D DIC method was then applied to determine the Coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of thin metallic films
[10, 15, 24]. Chen et al. [8] measured the displacement and

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strain of aluminum at 800C using 3-dimensional (3-D) DIC.

Yang et al. developed a high temperature micro DIC to study
the deformation and failure of thermal barrier coatings surface and near interface regions during thermal shock at
1100C [16]. Berke and Jambros [18] used ultraviolet digital
image correlation with ultraviolet lights and UV optics to
minimize the light emitted by specimens at high temperature
(1125C). To investigate the thermal interactions of structures, Jin et al. measured the thermal deformation of double
ring structures using the 3-D DIC technique; the stress distribution of the double ring was obtained with a 2-D stressstrain relation at temperatures up to 200C [13]. The thermal
buckling behavior of a thin circular aluminum plate due to
the thermal interaction of the aluminum plate and the outer
titanium ring was investigated using the 3-D DIC technique
[12]. Jin et al. [11] used the DIC based ARAMIS system to
study the thermal deformation and thermal buckling of a
laminated composite plate up to 120C; this technique has a
strain measuring range from 0.05% to 100% and a strain accuracy of up to 0.01% [25]. High-temperature DIC measurements were used to study the mechanical response of a super
alloy under uniaxial and biaxial stress states [26]. Swaminathan et al. investigated the Portevin-Le Chatelier effect in the
nickel super alloy Hastelloy X under thermo-mechanical
loading using DIC [27]. A microscale pattern was also developed for DIC at temperatures up to 1400C [28]. In addition,
a study of thermal contraction of materials has also been carried out numerous times. A novel technique was developed to
measure the thermal contraction properties of materials between -3C and -266C using extensometers [29]. Isgr et al.
measured the thermal contraction of materials by dilatometry
[30]. Nakahara et al. [31] studied thermal strain and thermal
contraction of materials at low temperatures using an electronic speckle pattern interferometer. Mehrara et al. [32] described the development of an experimental technique for
measuring the contraction of the solidification of steel, and
the analysis of the contraction behavior of low-alloy steels
during and after solidification using a laser sensor and data
acquisition software to analyze the real time measurements.
However, studies on the thermal interaction behavior of a
structure during the process of both heating-up and coolingdown using DIC are rare.
In this study, 3-D DIC was used to investigate hightemperature thermal deformation of a circular plate-ring structure subjected to a temperature load. A circular aluminum
plate was placed inside a stainless steel ring without a fixed
constraint. To evaluate the thermal deformation of this structure, an experimental setup for a high-temperature DIC
method was used in this study. In this experiment, the structure was heated from temperature of a 30C to 550C using an
infrared radiation heater. When this structure was heated, the
aluminum plate expanded freely as the temperature rose; the
gap between the inner plate and the outer ring decreased, and
the inner plate could interact with the outer ring. The temperature of the heater and the trigger signal for the DIC measure-

Fig. 1. An aluminum plate and stainless steel structure specimen.

ment system were controlled by a computer using the

LABVIEWTM program. Images of surface of structure were
recorded for the temperature rise at every 10C. Then, the
thermal deformation, and total strain fields were then obtained
from the DIC measurement system by with ARAMIS software. In addition, a process of both heating-up and coolingdown was done to examine the recoverable characteristics of
the structure through the change in diameter of the structure.
To confirm of the validity of the proposed measurement technique, the finite element analysis method was used to perform
thermal deformation of the circular plate-ring structure at
high-temperatures. A comparison between the FEM and experimental results regarding thermal deformation, thermal
strain, and contact temperature are discussed.

2. Material and methods

2.1 Specimen preparation
We measured the full-field thermal deformation, strain and
stress of an inner aluminum circular plate-outer stainless steel
ring structure using 3D-DIC. An aluminum plate and stainless
steel ring structure was considered to study the interaction of
these two metallic parts. Aluminum and stainless steel materials are used because they have different CTEs that can cause
the thermal stress. Moreover, aluminum and stainless steel are
commonly used in aerospace engineering. Fig. 1(a) shows a
sample in which the aluminum plate was placed inside the
stainless steel ring.
Before measurement, the dimension of the stainless steel
ring and aluminum plate was measured using a digital caliper
(Mitutoyo, accuracy 0.001 mm). The inner and outer diameters of the stainless steel ring were 70.00 mm and 49.86 mm,
respectively, while the diameter of the aluminum plate was
49.66 mm. Therefore, with these dimensions the gap between
the inner plate and outer ring was calculated of 0.2 mm at
25C. Both the aluminum plate and stainless steel ring were 6
mm thick. Fig. 1(b) shows the real configuration of the aluminum plate and stainless steel ring during the experiment: The
aluminum plate was supported by the stainless steel ring, and
they were in contact at the bottom before heating test. The
circular aluminum plate was placed in a stainless steel ring
without being fixed. For a successful DIC test, the surface of
the specimen was coated by a random speckle pattern with
black and white paint, as shown in Fig. 1(c).

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Fig. 2. Schematic of high-temperature digital image correlation measurement.

2.2 Experimental setup

A schematic of the experimental setup used to measure the
high-temperature thermal interaction of the circular plate-ring
structure is shown in Fig. 2. In this experiment, the infrared
radiation heater was controlled by the LABVIEWTM software.
This radiation heater is able to achieve temperatures up to
650C quickly and efficiently. The imaging optical system
consisted of the ARAMIS software (version 6.0.3), a controller box and two Charged coupled device (CCD) cameras. The
cameras were controlled by a trigger signal from a computer
using the LABVIEWTM software. Two CCD cameras with 50
mm optical lenses were used to capture images of the specimens surface. The image resolution of these cameras was
20482048 pixels. To determine the deformation of the structure accurately, the cameras should be calibrated using a calibration panel with un-coded Ref. [24]. During the calibration,
the distance of the cameras and the orientation of the cameras
to each other are determined. After the calibration, the measurement area was 7575 mm2 (spatial resolution of 36.6
m/pix = 75 mm divided by 2048 pixels) with a calibration
deviation of 0.021 pixels. Based on the sub-pixel displacement
algorithm [32], the theoretical errors in the DIC were less than
0.02 pixels (0.73 m) for the in-plane displacement and
0.04 pixels (1.46 m) for the out-of-plane displacement.
However, due to the speckle pattern, rigid body motion, heat
haze and noise during the image acquisition, the error could
increase. The sensitivity with 3D image correlation is 1/30000
the field of view [34]; thus, corresponding to the set measurement area of 7575 mm2 in this experiment, the measurement
error was 2.5 m for in-plane measurement.
The design of the infrared radiation heater was based on the
expected temperature of the specimens front surface, the
temperature requirement of the heater surface, and the distance between the heater and specimen. In this experiment, the
expected temperature of the material was 600C. Then, by
using the equation for the absorbed energy by the specimen
and the equation for the required energy of proposed infrared
radiation heater, the heater performance was calculated with
the distance between the heater and the specimen shown in
Fig. 3. Consequently, heater performance can be determined

Fig. 3. Heater temperature requirement with various distances from the

heater to the specimen when the expected temperature of the specimen
was 600C.

and subsequently selected through the specifications of the

infrared radiation lamps which will be designed for the infrared radiation heater and chosen by the quartz lamps maximum temperature of 750C (220 V, 1000 W).
The thermal deformation measurement procedure of the circular plate-ring structure is as follows. First, after making the
speckle pattern on the surface of the structure, a thermocouple
was welded onto the back side of the structure (facing the
cameras) to determine the temperature of the captured image
surface. The structure was put on the support of the baffle
plate with its front side facing to the radiation heater. The
cameras faced the back side of structure, where the speckle
pattern was visible. A white light source was adopted to illuminate the structure surface during the experiment. Second,
the structure was then heated to a series of set-point profiles at
certain temperatures. Finally, the deformed images were captured after the desired temperatures were reached.
To start the experiment, a reference image at 30C was initially captured. During the heating process, the structure was
heated from 30C to 550C at 60C/min. The total heating
time took approximately 515 seconds. During the image acquisition time, images were recorded as the temperature
reached the desired temperature. Subsequently, 53 images of
the deformed specimen were consecutively recorded at temperature increments of 10C up to 550C. These images were
recorded for analysis by the ARAMIS software, which directly compared each deformed image with the reference image. And then, the structure was cooled to 50C at the natural
room cooling rate (15C/min). Fig. 4 shows the experimental
setup for measuring the thermal deformation of the structure.
2.3 Thermal contact temperature
As the structure was heated up, the aluminum plate placed
in the stainless steel ring expanded faster than the stainless
steel ring because the CTE of the aluminum plate is higher
than that of the stainless steel ring. Thus, while the temperature of the structure was increased by an infrared heater, the

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Table 1. Elastic moduli and CTEs of aluminum and stainless steel were
taken from ASM and MMPDS handbook.
Aluminum (AL-2024-T351)

Stainless steel (S304)

Temp.
(C)

CTEa
(10-6
m/m/C)

Elastic
modulusb
(GPa)

CTEc
(10-6
m/m/C)

Elastic
modulusb
(GPa)

Fig. 4. In situ experimental setup, heating from the front side of the
specimen (facing the heater) is shown on the right side. The image on
the left side shows the arrangement of experiment.

gap between the outer ring and the inner plate decreased. Contact temperature is defined as the temperature at which the gap
disappears shown in following equation [11]

50

21.3

76.69

16

198

100

21.6

75.24

16

195

150

21.1

72.35

16.3

191

200

21.6

67.29

16.5

187

250

22.3

64.24

16.8

184

300

23.4

61.19

17.5

182

350

24.2

58.9

17.8

177

400

25.07

57.0

18.0

172

450

25.68

52.5

18.1

166

500

26.44

50.0

18.2

161

550

26.95

48.0

18.4

158

a, b

Tcontact

GAP
,
= TR +
RAL a AL - RSteel a steel

(1)

Values were taken from Ref. [35]

Values were taken from Refs. [37-39]

where TR is the room temperature; RAL is the radius of the

aluminum plate; RST is the inner radius of the stainless steel
ring, GAP is the initial gap between the plate and the stainless
steel ring; AL is the CTE of aluminum, and ST is the CTE of
stainless steel. We assumed that the CTE is independent on
temperature during the temperature increases. The average
CTEs were used. Therefore, the contact temperature was then
calculated to be 507C from the following Eq. (1). Contact
stress occurred between the two materials when the temperature was higher than the contact temperature.
2.4 Finite element analysis
ABAQUS software was used to simulate the thermal interaction between aluminum plate and stainless steel ring. To
save computing time, only one-half of the real structure was
performed. The model was meshed using C3D8R (8-node
three-dimensional element with a reduced integration scheme)
elements. To simulate the interaction between plate and the
ring, surface-to-surface contact elements were used. The aluminum plate was placed in contact with the ring by a line. To
consider material nonlinearity, the temperature dependencies
of the CTE and elastic modulus were considered. The symmetric boundary conditions in a plane of symmetry and the
fixed boundary condition along the edge were imposed on the
model shown in Fig. 5.
To analyze the structure accurately, the appropriate mechanical properties of the structure are indispensable. In this
research, the material properties of aluminum AL-2024-T351
and stainless steel S304 were taken from Metallic materials
properties development and standardization (MMPDS) [35]
and ASM handbook [36]. These values are listed in Table 1.

Fig. 5. Modeling of the structure in ABAQUS, the gap is 0.2 mm, and
the half-model of the structure was used to reduce the time required for
the analyses.

3. Results and discussion

3.1 Thermal deformation
In the experiment, the plate-ring structure was freely supported by an aluminum stand. When the structure was heated,
the thermal expansion of aluminum stand could cause the
motion of the plate-ring structure. The effect of rigid body
motion of structure was eliminated using the movement correction function in ARAMIS software. The proper facet size
is also important for obtaining accurate displacement results.
In this experiment, the facet size was selected as 15 15 pixels with a facet step of 13 pixels (corresponding to a 2 pixel
overlapping area). The speckle pattern size was 4 4 pixels.
When facet size is smaller than the mentioned values, the accuracy of the resulting measured points improves and the
computation requires more time.

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(a)

(a)

(b)

Fig. 7. uy displacement from 520C to 540C, respectively: (a) ydisplacements from 520C to 530C; (b) y-displacement from 530C to
540C (unit: m).

(b)
Fig. 6. Comparisons of the uy displacement fields of the double ring at
(a) 200C; (b) 550C (unit: mm).

Fig. 6 shows the results of displacement uy obtained by the

ARAMIS software and simulated by ABAQUS at 200C and
550C. The maximum displacements of the aluminum plate
measured by the ARAMIS software were 300 m and 700
m at 200C and 550C, respectively. Meanwhile, the maximum displacements of the aluminum plate from the finite
element analysis were 305 m and 710 m at 200C and
550C, respectively. It is clear that the differences between the
experiment and simulation are less than 1.6%. The results
show that the measurement results were in good agreement
with the analysis results.
The change in the diameter is the total displacements in the
diameter of the structure in the deformed image compared to
the reference image. In this experiment, the calculation of the
diameter change (Dd) used y-directional displacements for
each specific step of the temperature increment (deformed
image). The changes in the diameters of the inner plate and
outer ring from the ARAMIS software were compared to that
of the analysis to confirm the accuracy of the measurement
method. The analysis and the experimental results showed that
the diameter of the inner plate was positively displaced by
0.183 mm and 0.178 mm (3% difference) at 200C, respectively. Similarly, the analysis and the experimental results
showed that the diameter of the inner plate was positively
displaced by 0.697 mm and 0.700 mm (0.5% difference) at
550C, respectively, shown in Fig. 6.
The contact temperature is a very important factor to study
the thermal interaction between the outer ring and the inner
plate. To determine the contact temperature, the displacements
of the ring and plate were compared for each step of temperature increment. If the displacement of the ring is close to that

Fig. 8. Diameter changes of inner plate and outer ring from analysis
and measurement.

of the plate, the ring is then in contact with plate. The

ARAMIS software can calculate the deformation of the
structure using the reference image (first image) and also the
images of the previous increment steps. Fig. 7 shows the uy
displacement contours for temperature from 520C to 530C
and from 530C to 540C. Fig. 7(a) shows that the displacement of the inner plate is 7.01 m greater than that of the outer
ring (5.39 m), which means that the gap had not been closed
yet at 530C. Meanwhile, in Fig. 7(b), the displacement of the
inner plate was close to that of the outer ring at 530C and
540C, which means that the gap was closed at a temperature
between 530C and 540C. In other words, the inner circular
plate contacted the outer ring at about 540C. According to Eq.
(1), the contact temperature in linear analysis was calculated
as 507C, which was a difference of 33C from the experimental measurement. The reason for this is that constant material properties were assumed.
Fig. 8 shows diameter changes of inner plate and outer ring
from analysis and measurement. The slope of the displacement-temperature curves changed at around 530C. This
change indicates the contact between the inner plate and the
outer ring. The rate of the displacement changes is the same
for the circular plate and the ring after 530C.
The diameter change of outer ring between experiment and

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(a)

(b)
Fig. 11. Total strain field of the structure calculated at 200C from the
analysis and the ARAMIS software. The contour was from 0 to 3%.

Fig. 9. Region of interest in the structure.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 10. y-direction total strain fields of the structure measured at

550 C by DIC: (a) Strain field without the contact region of the two
structures; (b) strain fields after application of the average filter.

simulation is similar, while the difference of diameter change

of inner plate increases as temperature increases. The possible
reason could be the measurement error due to haze at high
temperature.
3.2 Thermal strain and stress
Fig. 9(a) show the origin strain at 550C. However, large
strain noise or strain error appeared at the contact region. The
errors occurred if the reference and deformed facet was located at the contact region. If a facet was located at the contact
region, missing of the speckle pattern in the facet produced
big noise, or sometimes excessive deformation.
To reduce the error (noise) in the strain field, pre- and postprocessing procedures were performed in this work. Two
kinds of post-processing procedures were performed to reduce
the noise in the strain and stress fields. In the first postprocessing procedure, the contact region of the circular plate
and ring was excluded from the calculation shown in Fig. 9(b)
because the facets in this area have a high probability to be
matched with incorrect facets that will produce incorrect displacement results.
In the second post-processing procedure, an average filter
function that was implemented in ARAMIS software was
applied. The noise in the strain fields measured by the DIC
technique can be removed effectively using those functions.
Figs. 10(a) and (b) shows the original strain field and the
strain field with post-processing procedures. It is obvious that
the error and noise in the strain field were reduced significantly as Fig. 10(b) is compared with Fig. 10(a).
Figs. 11 and 12 show the comparisons of the total strain

Fig. 12. Total strain field of the structure calculated at 550C from the
analysis and the ARAMIS software. The contour was from 0 to 3%.

fields measured by the DIC and calculated by analysis for

220C and 550C. The inner plate has a bigger deformation
than the outer ring due to the initial gap between the inner
plate and outer ring. The maximum strain xx at the middle of
the inner plate is 0.386% from the DIC measurement and
0.377% from the analysis at 200C, which is a 2% difference.
The maximum strain yy at the middle inner plate is 0.362%
from the DIC measurement and 0.371% from the analysis at
200C, which is a 3% difference. Similarly, the differences
between the DIC measurement and analysis for the total
strains xx and yy were 1.5% and 6.9% at a temperature of
200C, and 10% and 9.7% at a temperature of 550C, respectively. Note that the measured strain was the total strain which
is the sum of the thermal strain and the mechanical strain. The
results show that the measured strain field based on DIC technique is in good agreement with analysis strain field.
The mechanical strain, which is used to calculate the stress,
can be obtained using the subtraction of total strain and thermal strain shown in Eq. (2). The total strain was already
measured using the DIC technique, and the thermal strain was
the thermal expansion of the structure for the temperature
increments. Using the plane stress assumption and material
property of the aluminum, the thermal stress can be obtained
from Eq. (3), and the mechanical strain can be calculated from
Eq. (4). Stress field is obtained by using the relationship
between the mechanical strain and stress shown in Eq. (5):
M = total - thermal

thermal

(2)

0
aDT
=

0
a
D
T

e xxtotal - aDT
M =
e yx

e xy

e yytotal - aDT

(3)
(4)

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4369

(a)
Fig. 14. Change in length of the inner aluminum plate during the heating and cooling processes, Dd (mm).

(b)
Fig. 13. Stress fields calculated by FEM and measured by ARAMIS
software for the circular plate-ring structure at 550C. The contour was
from -25 to 60 MPa.

2
s xx 1 - v
vE
s yy =
2
s 1 - v
xy 0

vE
1 - v2
E
1 - v2
0

0
e xxM

0 e yyM
M
2e
G xy

(5)

where M, total, thermal are the mechanical strain, the total strain,
and the thermal strain, respectively. The elastic modulus,
Poissons ratio, and shear modulus are denoted by E, and G,
respectively.
Fig. 13 shows the comparisons of the stress fields measured
by the ARAMIS software and that calculated from the finite
element analysis at 550C. The aluminum plate was in compression, and the xx and yy were -13.1 MPa and -10.6 MPa at
the center of the plate, respectively. Compared with that from
analysis, those values were -13.6 MPa and -13.6 MPa, respectively. The comparison of the stress between the measurement
results and the simulation results show that the values for largest difference were 35% and 11% in xx and yy, respectively.
The results show that there is a significant difference in stress
between the measurement and simulation due to measurement
errors and the non-uniform distribution of the temperature
across the whole aluminum circular plate. The stress field
contours of the measurement result show a non-uniform dis-

tribution (non-symmetric) of contact stress at the top and bottom of the aluminum circular plate due to the initial contact
area of the two structures. There is pre-contact stress occurring
at the bottom area before the two structures come into contact
at the top. A flaw in the configuration of the set-up was assumed when putting the inner aluminum circular plate inside
the outer stainless steel ring, even though we did our best to
ensure perfect experimental conditions.
According to material properties data [35], the yield
strength of aluminum alloy-2024 is about 345 MPa at a temperature of 25C and 27.2 MPa at 550C. As shown in Fig. 13,
the maximum stress of the structure is about 25 MPa, which is
still smaller than the yield strength of the material at 550C.
Consequently, we can say that the structure did not reach the
plasticity region.
3.3 Thermal contraction of the structure
After contacting the stainless steel, the aluminum plate continued to expand. The temperature reached 550C, and then,
the heater was switched off and structure was cooled to 50C
in natural room cooling conditions at a rate of approximately
15C/min shown in Fig. 14. To investigate the recoverable
capability of the materials, the diameter change of inner aluminum plate was performed with time (sec). The biggest
change of diameter of the inner circular plate and the inner
diameter of the outer ring were 0.693 mm and 0.495 mm at
550C, respectively.
After doing image correlation processing in the ARAMIS
software with 14 deformed images, we obtained the displacement field during the cooling process of the structure. Figs.
15(a) and (b) show a comparison of the diameter changes
during the heating and cooling process at various temperatures.
The comparisons show the recovery capability of the inner
aluminum plate and the inner diameter of the outer ring, respectively. According to the results, this material tends to recover to its initial size at 50C. This result means that the material can recover to its original shape and dimension because
it deforms within the elastic region. The significant differences

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The interaction behavior of the structural materials due to

thermal contraction was successfully measured during the
cooling process. The thermal deformations of the structure
measured by the ARAMIS software and simulated by the
ABAQUS software agreed well in terms of the tendencies of
the deformation curve. During the cooling process, the structure tends to return to its original size. A slower elastic recovery was observed during cooling process. The DIC measurement was able to measure the thermal strain. The results from
this research indicate that the DIC technique is capable of
measuring full-field deformations and thermal interactions of
complex structures at high temperatures.
(a)

Acknowledgment
This work was conducted at High-Speed Vehicle Research
Center of KAIST with the support of Defense Acquisition
Program Administration (DAPA) and Agency for Defense
Development (ADD). The authors are grateful for the financial support.

Nomenclature------------------------------------------------------------------------

(b)
Fig. 15. Recovery capability of the structure during the heating and
cooling processes: (a) Change in the diameter of the inner aluminum
plate; (b) change in the inner diameter of the outer stainless steel ring.

in diameter changes of the aluminum plate during the process

were 4.7% and 5.9% at 420C and 460C, respectively, shown
in Fig. 15(a). Fig. 15(b) also shows differences in diameter
changes of the inner diameter of the outer ring during the
process although the differences were smaller. They was approximately 2~3.5% difference at temperatures from 420460C. Possibly, these differences occurred due to slower
elastic recovery of the aluminum alloy and the outer stainless
steel, and due to temperature distribution inside the structure,
there is still a non-uniform temperature distribution in the
outer stainless steel ring and the inner aluminum circular plate.

4. Conclusions
The present study used the digital image correlation technique to study and characterize the thermal interaction and
behavior of the circular plate-ring structure at temperatures up
to 550C. The structure was heated at heating rate of
60C/min by a radiation heater. The contact temperature of the
structure was predicted by theoretical calculation. It was also
determined by experimental results. To validate the experimental results, an analysis was performed using ABAQUS.

TR
RAL
RST
GAP
AL
ST
M
total
thermal
E

: Room temperature, Celsius temperature scale

: Radius of aluminum plate
: Inner radius of stainless steel ring
: Initial gap
: Coefficient of thermal expansion of aluminum
: Coefficient of thermal expansion of stainless steel
: Mechanical strain matrix
: Total strain matrix
: Thermal strain matrix
: Youngs modulus
: Poissons ratio
: Shear modulus

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Vinh Tung Le received his B.S. in

Aeronautics from Department of Aerospace Engineering of Ho Chi Minh City
University of Technology, Vietnam in
2013, and M.S. in Department of Advanced Technology Fusion, Konkuk
University, South Korea in 2015. He is
currently a Ph.D. student at Konkuk
University. He is researching heat transfer phenomena in
thermal protection systems.

Ngoc San Ha graduated from Aeronautical Engineering of Ho Chi Minh City

University of Technology, Viet Nam,
2008, and got the Ph.D. from Department of Advanced Technology Fusion,
Konkuk University, Korea, 2014. Currently, he is a Research Professor at the
Department of Advanced Technology
Fusion, Konkuk University, Korea. His topics of interest primarily focus on bioinspired composite material, structural
dynamics of small systems, material characterization and digital image correlation application.
Tailie Jin received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Yanbian University of Science in 2007. Then, M.S. and
Ph.D. in the Department of Advanced
Technology Fusion at Konkuk University in 2009 and 2014, respectively.
Currently, he is working at OMA Co.,
Daejeon, Korea. His research interests
are thermal deformation measurement using digital image
correlation and motion analysis of structures using 3D cameras.
Nam Seo Goo graduated from Department of Aeronautics Engineering of
Seoul National University with honors
in 1990, and earned M.S. and Ph.D. in
Aerospace Engineering at the same university in 1992 and 1996, respectively.
He is a Professor in the Department of
Advanced Technology Fusion at
Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea. His current research interests are structural dynamics of small systems, smart structures
and materials and opto-mechanics.