Carbon fibre reinforced silicon carbide (C/SiC) composites were in situ observed up to 1400°C using an ultraviolet (UV) imaging system. The captured images were analysed by mean grey values at different temperatures. Thermal strain fields were obtained via digital image correlation (DIC) using the microstructure as speckle patterns (microstructure based DIC, M-DIC). The results show that it was effective using UV imaging system for in situ observation of surface of C/SiC composite up to 1400°C. Below 1000°C, the C/SiC kept no change while above 1000°C the change of SiC occurred. Local strain showed heterogeneous values based on the microstructure of C/SiC. The averaged coefficient of thermal expansion of cabon fibre bundles in composite measured agreed well with the literature data.

Synchronous measurement of full-field temperature and deformation at high temperature especially more than 1273 K is of much significance especially for part applications of turbine structures and materials. Non-contact optical methods attract more and more attention, however, current methods all face different challenges, such as strong light reflection on the surface of the specimen, disturbing radiation from environment, complex equipment setup, limited measured temperature not higher than 900 °C and so on. In this work, we develop an innovative technique to overcome some current problems. The measurement system employing an ultraviolet (UV) imaging system is composed of a scientific complementary metal oxide semiconductor (sCMOS) camera, a lens and a UV bandpass filter. The UV bandpass filter was used for thermal radiation elimination to acquire high quality images at elevated temperatures for deformation field calculation suitable for digital image correlation (DIC) method. The UV sensitive sCMOS camera without using active illumination was employed to collect enough UV radiation energy and eliminate the interference of the external ambient light, which is applicable for high accuracy temperature field measurement. Our system can realize the synchronous capture of image and temperature acquisition with passive UV imaging system at temperature not lower than 1473 K. The feasibility of the method was verified through heating molybdenum (Mo) and Ni-based superalloy IC21 materials. The temperature fields of Mo measured by the established imaging system up to 1835 K with error less than 0.25% showed the effectiveness for temperature measurement. The estimated deformation and temperature field of Ni-based superalloy IC21 up to 1473 K with measured temperature error less than 0.5% demonstrated well the great potential of the UV imaging system in simultaneous measurement of temperature and deformation fields at elevated temperatures.

High temperature creep resistance is a critical characteristic of Ni-based single crystal (SX) superalloys. In this work, the creep behavior of a Ni-based SX superalloy was in situ characterized at 980 °C by ultraviolet (UV) imaging combined two-dimensional digital image correlation (DIC) in vacuum environment. The surface pattern was fabricated to maintain stable over 65 h at 980 °C. The pattern images captured by UV imaging were analyzed using mean gray value and the full-field strain map of creep deformation was obtained. A laser displacement senor (LDS) was employed for measuring the creep strain on the specimen for comparison. The creep deformation result shows a good agreement between DIC and LDS, the microstructure of the different creep areas on the specimens also demonstrate that the results of DIC are reliable. The in situ creep characterization by UV-DIC shows a great potential for investigating creep behaviors at high temperatures.

1. Accurate measurement of material and structural deformation under extreme high-temperature conditions is essential for high-temperature engineering applications [1–3]. Digital image correlation ...