Measurement of displacement vector fields of extended objects

The main effort in laser metrology during the last 15 years has been focussed on the development of high precision phase measurement techniques, since the phase is the primary quantity for interferometrical testing. However, the phase distribution gives only a first impression of the deformation of the surface. In practice, the three-dimensional displacement components are required if the mechanical behaviour of the object under load is to be investigated. To calculate displacement components some further quantities are necessary, e.g. the three coordinates of the object points. Although the contour measurement can also be reduced to a phase measurement problem, the measurement of three-dimensional displacements is more complex than a high precision phase evaluation. From the practical point of view, four main tasks have to be performed: planning of the experiment, design of the interferometer, acquisition of data and evaluation of data. This paper deals with a discussion of the theoretical background of the last three procedures concerning the state of the art and describes some general rules as well as some problems remaining to be solved for the investigation of extended specimens.