Throughout their useful life structures demand monitoring to verify their conditions of use. Thus, the need arises to seek methodologies capable to evaluate displacements and deformations in structural components of buildings. The objective of this research was to evaluate the use of the particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique to analyze test specimen behavior during a static bending test, additionally a displacement map is presented. The PIV technique measures variations of position of a region in an object from consecutive images from a loading session. The tests were performed on wood of Pinus oocarpa and Eucalyptus grandis, plywood panels, laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and oriented strand board (OSB). The results obtained by the PIV technique were compared to values obtained from dial indicators. It was verified that in all the materials tested, the PIV technique presented results similar to those found in the dial indicators. By means of the Student t test, with a significance level of 1%, some regions of analysis the values found by the PIV technique and the dial indicators were statistically similar. For the analyzed regions that did not achieve statistical equality, a correction equation was calculated (R² higher than 0.99). It was concluded that the PIV technique, with properly adjusted setup, presented results similar to those obtained in the conventional tests, proving its accuracy and reliability in displacement measurements, with the advantage of being a non-destructive and contactless structure monitoring technique.
