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2D full-field deformation measurement at grain level using optical flow with deep networks

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Abstract

Geotechnical particle image velocimetry (GeoPIV), as a type of digital image correlation (DIC), represents the state-of-the-art methodology for non-contact full-field deformation measurement in geotechnical engineering. Yet, when applying GeoPIV on sand specimens with interests in grain level, the discontinuities detection at grain boundaries remains as a challenge for 2D GeoPIV applications. In order to facilitate the full-field measurement for microscopic study, a method is proposed in this study to realize 2D pixel-level motion calculation using supervised optical flow algorithm with deep networks. Using digital images acquired from direct shear testing, the performance of this approach is demonstrated and compared with the prevailing GeoPIV method. Two series of experiments using small and large displacement modes were conducted, respectively, to demonstrate the method’s ability of revealing greater insights on soil behavior at grain level. To verify its accuracy, performance benchmarking of the approach was also conducted. Besides, a method was proposed to evaluate the errors in experimental images to ensure the accuracy and precision. It was demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve accurate pixel-level motion field calculation using images of common size and that the deformation discontinuities among particles can be clearly presented.

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Data availability

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coastal Engineering Department, Surbana Jurong Consultants Pte Ltd, Singapore, 636741, Singapore

    Zhiyong Zhang

  2. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Harianto Rahardjo

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576, Singapore

    Zhiyuan Yan

  4. The Future Laboratory, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Xiaolei Yin

Authors
  1. Zhiyong Zhang
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  2. Harianto Rahardjo
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  3. Zhiyuan Yan
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  4. Xiaolei Yin
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Correspondence to Zhiyong Zhang.

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Appendix: application of the proposed method on a penetration test with fine sand

Appendix: application of the proposed method on a penetration test with fine sand

1.1 Experimental setting

To evaluate the performance of the proposed method on different types of sand and testing scenario, we conducted another penetration test using finer sand. Figure 

Fig. 16
figure 16

Penetration test: a schematic diagram of the with image acquisition system; b particle size distribution of the sand used in the manuscript and Appendix; c front view

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16a shows the experimental setup, which was similar to the one used in the main text. A metal plate penetrated into the sand sample, and the front view of the visual window is displayed in Fig. 16c. Figure 16b and Table 

Table 4 Comparison of sand properties
Full size table

4 compare the properties of the finer sand and the sand used in the main text.

1.2 Results

The calculation results are shown in a manner similar to the main text. The penetrating interval is 0.1 mm. Figure 

Fig. 17
figure 17

Displacement field under penetration of 0.1-mm interval

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17 shows the incremental displacement field under 0.1 mm shearing in Fig. 17a–c and the accumulated displacement field under 0.2 mm and 0.3 mm shearing in Fig. 17d and e.

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Zhang, Z., Rahardjo, H., Yan, Z. et al. 2D full-field deformation measurement at grain level using optical flow with deep networks. Acta Geotech. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-024-02242-x

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