Interior fracture analysis of rubber-cement composites based on X-ray computed tomography and digital volume correlation

•The fracture process of rubber-cement composites is studied non-destructively.•The volumetric strain of the rubber-cement composites is obtained based on DVC.•The method for optimizing the DVC calculation parameters are proposed. Due to the complexity of the interior of a rubber-cement composites, its internal stress/strain is very complex. In this study, a digital volume correlation based on X-ray computed tomography was used to obtain the interior volumetric displacement and volumetric strain of the rubber-cement composites under uniaxial compression. The results showed that the particle size and spatial distributions of the rubber particles could be obtained by image processing. The calculation parameters were optimal when the subset sizes were 43 voxels (three times the speckle particle size) and 5 voxels. The inconspicuous microcracks and their cracking patterns could be satisfactorily reflected in the three-dimensional volumetric displacement. The three-dimensional volumetric strain could be used to predict the cracking position inside the sample and the direction in which the crack extended.