A new moiré interferometer for measuring in-plane displacement

This paper proposes a new moiré interferometer to be used for determining in-plane displacement of a body deformed with small strains and small surface slopes. With this interferometer, the grating not only diffracts the incoming beam but also rediffracts the two first orders, each of which is reflected by a mirror, back into the path of the incoming beam. The two rediffracted beams are then directed to the viewer to generate an interference fringe pattern that depends only on the in-plane displacement. Theoretical analysis of this new interferometer is presented. It was determined that the sensivity of the interferometer is twice that of conventional interferometers, and the slightly warped beam wave front coming from the laser source does not affect the measurement result. An experiment was performed by adopting the proposed and conventional interferometers to determine the displacement of a specimen grating. The results confirm the advantages of using this new interferometer.