Measurement of coefficient of thermal

expansion of films using digital image

correlation method
Applications of the digital image correlation method (DIC) for the determination the
coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of films is investigated in this paper. The average
normal strains in the x and y direction from the region of interest are then extracted
for the determination of CTE.
What kind of material can we test with
traditional technique?
Conventional techniques, such as thermal-mechanical analysis, strain
gauges and quartz tube dilatometer. Techniques are suitable only for
bulk materials. The CCD imaging technique proposed by Wang et al. [1]
can extract the average thermal expansion strain between the two
edges of the film sample. Correspondingly, it can only be utilized to
determine the CTE of isotropic film materials [2]. Full-field optical
techniques, such as phase-shifting interferometry [3] and Electronic
Speckle Pattern Interferometry (ESPI) [4] have been proposed to
determine the whole field thermal expansion of thin film under thermal
loading.
Which is the experimental set-up?
Which is the experimental set-up?
Which material are then tested with DIC?
• A pure copper sample of size 30x30x0.5 mm was used as a reference.
• As an application to polymers, thermal expansion and CTE of PI/SiO2
composite films were determined by the proposed method. The semi-
transparent PI/SiO2 composite film contains 18% weight SiO2. The
test sample was of size 20 20 mm, which was cut from original
samples using a razor blade. The thickness of the sample was 40-50
um.
Validation of the technique
It can be concluded from the figure on the
next slide that the PI/SiO2 composite film is
an isotropic material, because the sample
expands uniformly around the center point
when temperature increases. Measured CTE
data of four samples are presented in Table
1. It is observed that the CTE values in the x
direction approximate those in the y
direction. The CTE of PI/SiO2 composite film
is significantly diminished by adding SiO2
fillers. These results are also in good
accordance with the reported results in Ref.
[2], which further verifies the validity of the
proposed technique.
Validation of the technique
Conclusion
The corresponding precision of CTE determined by forward difference is
about 1.33 106 / C. Certainly, this accuracy is a little lower than that
measured by phase-shifting ESPI, which was said to be 0.1 106 / C in
Ref. [4]. Nevertheless, considering the advantages of simple
experimental set-up, low environmental vulnerability, wide range of
measurement sensitivity and automatic data processing, the DIC
technique is worthy of employment for practical CTE measurement of
films