At present, the accuracy of strain measurement using a common optical extensometer with 2D digital image correlation is not sufficient for experimental applications due to the effect of out-of-plane motion. Therefore, this paper proposes a dual-reflector imaging method to improve the accuracy of strain measurement when using a common optical extensometer, with which the front and rear surfaces of a specimen can be simultaneously recorded in the sensor plane of a digital camera. By averaging the strain in two optical extensometers formed on the front and rear surfaces of a specimen, the effect of any slight out-of-plane motion can be eliminated and therefore the strain measurement accuracy can also be improved. Uniaxial tensile tests with an Al-alloy specimen, including static loading and continuous loading, were conducted to validate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed method. The strain measurement results obtained with the proposed method and those obtained with an electrical-resistance strain gauge were found to be in good agreement. The average errors of the proposed method for the two continuous loading tests were found to be 8 ± 10 με and −6 ± 8 με . Given that no correction sheet or compensation specimen is required, the proposed method is easy to implement and thus especially suitable for determining the mechanical properties of brittle materials due to the high level of accuracy with which strain can be measured.

In two-dimensional digital image correlation (2D-DIC), the optical axis of the camera must be exactly perpendicular to the object surface to avoid the generation of out-of-plane displacement, which leads to low strain accuracy. In this work, we first studied the strain accuracy of a common optical extensometer when the optical axis of the camera is not perpendicular to the specimen surface. Derivation reveals that even a very small oblique angle θ will introduce a considerable strain error and that an opposite oblique angle θ generates an opposite strain error of the same magnitude. Therefore, taking the strain average of these two optical extensometers can almost entirely eliminate such effect of non-perpendicularity, which has the same form as the optical extensometer realized by dual-reflector imaging. Because the transverse strain of a specimen is less than its axial strain, the measurement of transverse strain requires higher strain-measurement accuracy. With the aid of a self-designed right-angled apparatus, we conveniently extend this 1D extensometer to a 2D situation, which is called the biaxial optical extensometer. Uniaxial tensile tests of a stainless-steel specimen are conducted to evaluate the strain accuracy of the biaxial optical extensometer quantitatively. Experimental results show that the transverse and axial strains obtained using the proposed biaxial extensometer are in good agreement with those obtained using strain gauges and that the proposed extensometer achieves higher strain accuracy compared to the 3D-DIC extensometer.

Closed-cell AlCu5Mn alloy foam with porosity range of ~45–90% were fabricated by the melt-foaming route. The pore structure of the fabricated Al alloy foam was analyzed and the coupling effect of porosity and cell size on the quasi-static compression behavior of the foam was investigated. The results show that the cell size of the foam decreases with the porosity decline from the view of the contribution rate to the porosity and the hierarchical pore structure characteristics becomes obvious when the foam porosity is low; the compression stress–strain curves of the foams with high porosity (>74%) are serrated due to the large cell size being easy to deform and more strain needed to let the stress recover. Meanwhile, the compression curve of the foams with low porosity (<74%) are smooth without serration, which is attributed to the hierarchical pore structure and less strain needed to let the stress recovery.