Thermal interaction of a circular plate-ring structure using digital image correlation technique and infrared heating system

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 550°C 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.