DIGITAL SPECKLE-PATTERN INTERFEROMETRY (OPTICAL TESTING).

A digital speckle-pattern interferometer was built utilizing a 100 x 100 element Reticon diode array interfaced to an HP-9836C desk-top computer. A single-mode optical fiber mounted in the center of the system's aperture stop creates a spherical-wave reference beam. Secondary interference fringes are calculated inside the computer by subtracting speckle patterns before and after a deformation, and squaring this difference. This technique has been shown superior to that of taking the absolute value of the difference. The traditional vibrational observation technique of low-pass filtering a single speckle pattern and squaring the result is emulated in software. It is compared to four other vibration observation techniques. A new technique records the self-interference terms in a reference frame, and subtracts these from the time-averaged vibration data. It provides very good fringe contrast for moderately unstable objects, as well as interferometers which have not been optimized to minimize self-interference terms. The best vibration fringe contrast is obtained by subtracting two time-averaged speckle patterns of a single object resonance. One exposure has a relative π phase-shift between object and reference beams to cancel self-interference terms. This last technique is not real-time; whereas, the new technique is. Double-exposure speckle interferograms are averaged using a technique which utilizes a stepping motor to change the object illumination angle. Results of averaging deformation measurements and double-exposure vibration techniques show a large increase in fringe contrast with an accompanying reduction in speckle noise. Quantitative measurements of object deformations is demonstrated by applying phase-shifting interferometry techniques. A deformation's phase is found by subtracting modulo 2π phases measured for each object state. Phase discontinuities are removed with the aid of noise reduction algorithms. Limitations are low intensity modulation as the phase is shifted, and speckle decorrelation during object deformation. It is shown that 10 waves of object deformation are measurable to λ/10 across the detector array. The double-exposure phase-measurement technique works well and is applicable to many different metrological measurements. To show the versatility of this technique, an optically smooth surface is contoured using two illumination wavelengths