CONTOURING BY MOIRE INTERFEROMETRY

A double-exposure moire-interferometry technique for topographic contour measurement of an arbitrarily curved object is presented. A curved surface coated with light-sensitive material is exposed twice in a volume of virtual gratings formed by the interference of two coherent light beams split from a laser. An adequate rotation of the curved surface relative to the virtual grating between the two exposures produces moire fringes which reveal topographic contour, or contour under some conditions, of the surface. The advantage of the present method in comparison with others is that it offers both reasonably good fringe quality and easily adjustable high sensitivity. The sensitivity of the technique is shown to be from the order of micrometer to that of millimeter depending on the frequency of the virtual grating and the amount of the relative rotation. This technique was successfully applied to the topographic contour measurement of a cylindrical shell with and without a diametrical point loading. The principle of this paper and some early results were presented at the SPIE conference held at Dearborn, MI on June 27-30, 1988 and appeared in its proceedings.1