QUASI-STATIC TENSILE TESTING OF HIGH-STRENGTH BALLISTIC STEEL USING DIGITAL IMAGE CORRELATION – PRELIMINARY STUDY

High-strength ballistic steels are widely used in protective structures, military vehicles, and safety equipment due to their superior strength, hardness, and energy absorption capabilities, which are essential for resisting high-velocity impacts and ensuring structural integrity. While their primary application is in high-strain-rate conditions, understanding their quasi-static behavior is equally important, as it provides baseline mechanical properties for material modeling and structural performance predictions. The mechanical response of high-strength steels is strongly influenced by factors such as microstructure, chemical composition, and strain rate. Investigations of strain localization phenomena under varying loading conditions have shown that these materials can exhibit complex deformation patterns, particularly when subjected to dynamic or quasi-static tensile loads. In recent years, full-field optical measurement techniques, particularly Digital Image Correlation (DIC), have gained prominence in the characterization of metallic materials. DIC enables non-contact, high-resolution mapping of strain fields over the specimen surface, allowing for a more detailed understanding of deformation mechanisms compared to traditional measurement methods. A comprehensive review of DIC applications in laboratory structural tests confirms its versatility in evaluating mechanical behavior and identifying strain localization zones. This study presents quasi-static tensile testing of a high-strength ballistic steel specimen with fullfield strain measurements obtained using a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) system. The objective is to determine the material’s key mechanical properties, visualize strain distribution during deformation, and provide experimental data suitable for validation of future numerical simulations.