Over the last few decades, the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique has become an interesting tool used to measure displacements in the field of experimental mechanics. This paper presents a procedure to interpret PIV displacements, measured following an Eulerian scheme, with the purpose of providing accumulated displacements, velocities, accelerations, and strains on points representing physical particles. Strains are computed as the gradient of displacements. When compared with other standard procedures already published, the presented methodology is especially well suited to interpret large strains. The basis of the procedure is to map displacement increments measured through PIV analysis on the subset (or patch) centres into numerical particles that are defined as portions of the moving masses whose deformation is analyzed. The implementation of the method is explained in detail, highlighting its simplicity. The procedure can be used as a post-processor of currently available PIV software packages. The methodology is first applied to synthetic cases of rectangular samples in which known displacements are imposed and also to a sandy slope failure experiment involving large displacements. The method reproduces satisfactorily the recorded images.

Peer Reviewed