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Michael A. Sutton Carolina Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. He was also Chairperson of Mechanical Engineering and Chair of the University Tenure and Promotion Committee.

Research Work
Sutton is the author of more than 230 journal articles that span several areas of scientific inquiry. He is most known for his contributions to the invention, development and validation of the non-contacting, image-based deformation measurement methods known as digital image correlation methods, or DIC.

In the early 1980’s, Sutton and his co-workers invented the first DIC method, known today as two-dimensional DIC or 2D-DIC. This method is applicable for surface measurements on planar specimens undergoing nominally in-plane deformation and has been designated 2D-DIC.

While working with NASA researchers as part of the US Aging Aircraft Program, Sutton showed that crack tip opening displacement, or the more general mixed mode form using three-dimensional crack tip displacements, is a valid crack growth predictor for thin aerospace aluminum alloy components such as 2024-T3 and 2424-T3 commonly used in commercial aviation. Their research eventually led to the formulation and establishment of an ASTM Standard test method for determination of resistance to stable crack extension under low-constraint conditions that is used to demonstrate the fracture resistance of thin aerospace structures when subjected to mechanical loads during service. During the mid-1990s, Sutton and his colleagues pushed forward with the quantitative characterization of the crack tip strain fields in highly ductile materials. With an emphasis on understanding the limits of applicability of the theoretical Hutchinson-Rice-Rosengren (HRR) crack tip strain fields he measured the elastic-plastic strains and showed that the crack tip strain fields were in approximate agreement with theoretical predictions for nominally Mode I loading conditions when strains are in the. The work received the SEM RE Peterson Award. in 1996 as the outstanding application research article published in Experimental Mechanics. In the early 1990’s, it became clear that limitations inherent to the 2D-DIC method could be removed by modifying the vision system.

Sutton and his co-workers invented, and began the continuous process of improvements, for the new measurement system. The vision system, which is the heart of the new measurement system, nominally employs two cameras to view a common region. Since all three components of displacement are measured, the method was initially termed three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC). With the development of volumetric DIC methods circa 2000, to avoid confusion the term 3D-DIC has been termed StereoDIC in recent years. The ability to make internal (volumetric) measurements in those materials having sufficient internal volumetric image contrast was demonstrated by Prof. Brian Bay circa 2000. The method is a direct extension of 2D-DIC and is known as either volumetric digital image correlation (V-DIC) or digital volume correlation (DVC).

Even though successful StereoDIC experiments were performed in a laboratory setting earlier, the complex way in which calibration was performed limited its usefulness to optical benches and/or well-controlled laboratory conditions. During an 18-month sabbatical at NASA Langley (1992–93) sponsored by Dr. Charles E. Harris, Prof. Sutton worked directly with James C. Newman Jr, David Dawicke, Robert Piascik, Edward Phillips and Buddy Poe on issues related to crack extension as part of the US Aging Aircraft Program. During this time, Prof. Sutton was exposed to the critical need for a field-capable, three-dimensional deformation measurement system that could be used on full-scale aero-structures undergoing complex loading. With this information and with additional support from Dr. Harris, Sutton and his colleague Prof. Stephen McNeill worked with their student, Prof. Jeffrey Helm, and began the process of modifying the StereoDIC algorithms and defining a simpler, field-capable calibration process. By late 1994, a modified StereoDIC system and calibration process were developed. The field-capable SterepDIC methodology was published in 1996 with more advanced application of StereoDIC to thin aerospace structures published in 2003. Shortly after the modified StereoDIC system was completed, and with continued financial support from Dr. Harris at NASA Langley, the system was transported to the West Coast and used to complete one week of field experimentation on a full-scale airplane test article in Seattle, WA. The experiments were performed from January 30 through February 5, 1995 in a driving rainstorm. For these experiments, the aircraft test article was subjected to a combination of internal pressurization and tail loading. With the goal of demonstrating conclusively the capabilities of the recently completed, fully portable StereoDIC system, measurements were obtained successfully at three separate locations on the test article. These experiments conclusively demonstrated the versatility, accuracy and effectiveness of StereoDIC systems for non-contacting, full-field deformation and shape measurements in both field and laboratory environments. In early 2000s, research scientists including Dr. Michael Mello within Intel Corporation identified DIC as a critical technology for extreme high magnification measurements on the increasingly small components in advanced computer chip material systems. After discussions with Intel scientists, scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscope imaging systems were identified as the most likely to obtain high magnification images of the chip components and then used with DIC to obtain full-field deformation measurements in regions as small as 20μm x 20μm. Between 2002 and 2010, Prof. Sutton developed and successfully applied 2D-DIC to make quantitative measurements of deformations in small regions on heterogeneous chip cross-sections undergoing thermal loading. After noting that AFM systems had very high noise levels, Prof. Sutton and his colleagues Dr. Ning Li and Prof. Xiaodong Li focused on scanning electron microscope systems. They obtained a spatial resolution down to 10 nanometers while reducing displacement variability to less than a nanometer. A summary of these contributions was published in 2017 documenting the remarkable reduction in length scales that can be achieved if the electron microscope images are corrected and used with DIC to extract deformation measurements.

In the late 2000s, Prof. Thomas Borg in the USC School of Medicine introduced Prof. Sutton to his colleague, Prof. Susan Lessner. Prof. Lessner has a long-term interest in measuring the response of soft biological tissues, such as arteries, when subjected to mechanical loading. Working with Prof. Lessner for over a decade, Prof. Sutton developed and validated the use of StereoDIC systems to acquire accurate deformations on curvilinear arterial specimens subjected to combined pressure and axial loading. Of particular interest was the work performed with Dr. Ying Wang regarding the separation resistance of arterial tissues that incurred arterial dissection during mechanical loading. Focusing on fundamental concepts in fracture mechanics to provide a framework for assessing adhesive resistance in bio-materials, the work demonstrated that energy release rate was an excellent parameter to characterize the separation resistance of dissections in arterial tissues. The work conclusively demonstrated that energy release rate is an effective metric to assess the effect of local collagen content on separation resistance in arterial specimens. As the use of DIC methods has expanded world-wide, there has been growing recognition that this non-contacting method has the potential to provide important process information during manufacturing, especially during the past decade. Recognizing manufacturing as an area where limited investigators have been active, Prof. Sutton has worked with colleagues to improve understanding of advanced manufacturing process in both civil infrastructure and selected aerospace composite applications. With regard to civilian infrastructure, the US is rapidly expanding its use of relatively rigid, prestressed concrete railroad ties as a precursor to the development of high-speed rail systems. Recent studies where a concrete beam is imaged before and after application of a compressive pre-load confirms that the use of a StereoDIC system is an effective and accurate non-contact approach for measuring the small surface strain fields in a pre-stressed concrete beam specimen. The experiments confirm that StereoDIC measurements provide essential data to reliably estimate the transfer length and confirm that the entire concrete portion of the beam has the required compressive stress to maintain compression throughout service life. In addition to the civilian infrastructure research, recent studies have focused on quantifying the adhesion of uncured, unidirectional composite tows that are adhered to a similar composite tow using automated fiber placement (AFP) processing. Experiments are being performed by adhering a temperature and wear-resistant pattern to composite tows and then measuring the deformations of the tow as it is heated and bonded during AFP processing, providing essential data for physics-based simulations. In addition to the manufacturing studies noted above, as part of the effort a modified double cantilever beam adhesive specimen developed based on the work of Högberg is used to obtain the traction-separation law to be used in cohesive zone modeling law of the tow-to-tow bond layer.

Awards

 * The Society for Experimental Mechanics has decorated Sutton with several high honors including:
 * 1992 B.J. Lazan Award.
 * 1996 R.E. Peterson Award.
 * 2000 SEM Fellow Grade
 * 2003 Hetenyi Award.
 * 2004 ASME Fellow Grade
 * 2007 M.M. Frocht Award.
 * 2008 C.E. Taylor Award.
 * 2013 William M. Murray Medalist and Lecturer
 * 2018 F.G. Tatnall Award. for a lifetime of service
 * 2019 P.S. Theocaris Award for his lifelong contributions to experimental science and solid mechanics,.


 * In 2015, Sutton received the Alumni of the Year from the Mechanical Sciences and Engr Department (formerly the Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Department) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Selected Publications

 * Image correlation for shape, motion and deformation measurements: basic concepts, theory and applications, Springer Science & Business Media, 2665, 2009
 * Applications of digital-image-correlation techniques to experimental mechanics, Experimental Mechanics, 25 (3), 232-244,1985
 * Determination of displacements using an improved digital correlation method, Image and Vision Computing 1 (3), 133-139, 1983
 * Digital image correlation using Newton-Raphson method of partial differential correction, Experimental Mechanics 29 (3), 261-267, 1989
 * Application of an optimized digital correlation method to planar deformation analysis, Image and Vision Computing 4 (3), 143-150, 1986
 * Advances in two-dimensional and three-dimensional computer vision, Photomechanics, 323-372 ,2000
 * Systematic errors in digital image correlation caused by intensity interpolation, Optical Engineering, 39 (11), 2915-2922, 2000
 * Accurate measurement of three-dimensional deformations in deformable and rigid bodies using computer vision, Experimental Mechanics, 33 (2), 123-132, 1993
 * Microstructural studies of friction stir welds in 2024-T3 aluminum, Materials Science and Engineering: A 323 (1-2), 160-166, 2002
 * The effect of out-of-plane motion on 2D and 3D digital image correlation measurements, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 46 (10), 746-757