Research project: Imaging the mechanical properties of welds

Welds are everywhere around us. While it sounds like an easy process (see a friction stir welding process here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCe8-QYKZf4), welding produces a complex situation from a material point of view, as Illustrated in Figure 1.

As a consequence, the mechanical properties vary within the different areas of the weld and it is necessary to image these properties to derive suitable models to simulate real engineering cases like the crash of a car or the burst pressure vessels, as welds usually represent a weakness in structures, as in Figure 2.

This project aims at imaging the mechanical properties of welds using full-field strain measurements like digital image correlation. It builds up on previous work where this was done on simple tensile tests, as illustrated in Figure 3.