Fringe Pattern Evaluation

A
Project Report on
Fringe pattern Evaluation

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

Contents:Sr. No.
1)

2)

3)
4)

Topics
Theory
1.1 Birefringence
1.2 Isochromatic pattern
1.3 Interpretation of isochromatic patterns.
1.4 Isoclinic pattern
1.5 What makes stress visible
1.6 Why is the stress birefringence measured..

Page No.
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3
6
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Fringe Pattern Evaluation Technique...................................................

2.1 Two-dimensional windowed Fourier transform for fringe
pattern analysis.
2.2 Fringe skeletonisation methods.
2.3 Temporal heterodyning methods..
2.4 Phase locking methods...

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Electronic speckle pattern interferometry.

Some of the examples of fringe pattern observed while tasting the
flatness of the surface

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

1 Theory:
1.1 Birefringence
Birefringence occurs when an optical material in the path of a beam of light causes the beam to
be split into two polarization components which travel at different velocities. Birefringence is
measured as the difference of indices of the refraction of the components within the material. For
a light beam that has been split into two components by a material, birefringence is the
difference of the indices of refraction of the components within the material. This can also be
called double refraction of light.
Birefringence is an intrinsic property of many optical materials, and may also be induced by
external forces applied to the material. The induced birefringence may be temporary, as when the
material is oscillated, or the birefringence may be residual, as may happen when, for example,
the material undergoes thermal stress during production of the material.
Retardation or retardance represents the integrated effect of birefringence acting along the path
of a light beam that traverses a sample of the optical material. If the incident light beam is
linearly polarized, the two orthogonal components of the polarized light will exit the sample with
a phase difference, called the retardance. The fundamental unit of retardance is length, such as
nanometers (nm). It is frequently convenient, however, to express retardance in units of phase
angle (waves, radians, or degrees), which is proportional to the retardance (nm) divided by the
wavelength of the light (nm). An "average" or "normalized" birefringence for a sample is
sometimes computed by dividing the measured retardation magnitude by the thickness of the
sample.
The two orthogonal, polarized beam components mentioned above are parallel to two orthogonal
axes associated with the optical material, which axes are referred to as the "fast axis" and the
"slow axis." The fast axis is the axis of the material that aligns with the faster moving component
of the polarized light through the sample. Therefore, a complete description of the retardance of
a sample along a given optical path requires specifying both the magnitude of the retardance and
its relative angular orientation of the fast (or slow) axis of the sample.
Many transparent solids are optically isotropic, meaning that the index of refraction is equal in
all directions throughout the crystalline lattice. Examples of isotropic solids are glass, table salt,
many polymers, and a wide variety of both organic and inorganic compounds.
Crystals are classified as being either isotropic or anisotropic depending upon their optical
behavior and whether or not their axes are equivalent. All isotropic crystals have equivalent axes
that interact with light in a similar manner, regardless of the crystal orientation with respect to
incident light waves. Light entering an isotropic crystal is refracted at a constant angle and passes
through the crystal at a single velocity without being polarized by interaction with the electronic
components of the crystalline lattice. This means there will be no birefringence effects

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

It is also important to point out that some materials may be isotropic at some wavelengths
of light and exhibit birefringence characteristics at others.
The term anisotropy refers to a non-uniform spatial distribution of properties, which
result in different values being obtained when specimens are probed from several
directions within the same material. Observed properties are often dependent on the
particular probe being employed and often vary depending upon the whether the observed
phenomena are based on optical, acoustical, thermal, magnetic, or electrical events. On
the other hand, isotropic properties remain symmetrical, regardless of the direction of
measurement with each type of probe reporting identical results.
When light enters the optical axis of uniaxial (one type of anisotropic) crystals, it behaves
in a manner similar to the interaction with isotropic crystals, and passes through at a
single velocity. However, when light enters a non-equivalent axis, it is refracted into two
rays each polarized with their vibration directions oriented at right angles to one another,
and traveling at different velocities. This phenomenon is birefringence and is exhibited to
a greater or lesser degree in all anisotropic crystals. The axis along which light moves the
fastest is called the fast axis.

Figure: Circular polariscope 1

All transparent materials subject to stress exhibit temporary birefringence

Isochromatic fringes related to stress magnitude

Isoclinic fringes related to direction of principal stresses
Variety of digital fringe processing

RGB photoelasticity
No user-input for calibration of fringe map
Limited to isochromatic fringe orders less than 3
Fourier transforms
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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

High-quality isochromatic and isoclinic data

Requires tens of images
Fringe unwrapping and user-calibration
Phase-stepping
4 to 6 images for isochromatic & isoclinic data
Fringe unwrapping and user-calibration.

1.2 Isochromatic pattern:

Let us view a plane-stress model in a circular polariscope. A pattern of dark and light bands
forms in the viewing screen when external forces or loads are applied to the model, and the
number of these bands increases in proportion to the external forces. These patterns, which
provide the value of N throughout the model, are appropriately called isocromatic pattern.
1.3 Interpretation of isochromatic patterns:
Since 1 2 varies throughout the model in a continuous manner, N varies in a continuous
manner. A change from a dark fringe to an adjacent light fringe represents an increase or
decrease of 1/2 in the value of N ; to assign any other magnitude would violate the principle of
continuity. In terms of the isochromatic pattern, the isochromatic fringe order, N , at a point is
defined specifically as the number of fringes that pass through the point during the application of
the external loads. Thus, at point A in Fig. 6.4, N increases with load from 0 to l, 3 and 8.
Similarly, the number of fringes that passed through point B for these patterns is 1/2, 1 1/2 and 4.
We can, therefore, observe the formation of the isochromatic pattern to determine N at any point.
Alternately, we can learn to count fringes in an isochromatic pattern from a point of zero stress to
any other point in the model. In this case, it is important to recognize whether the fringe order is
increasing or decreasing along the path of the fringe count. Additional discussion appears under
the heading "Free-boundary Stresses.

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

1.4 Isoclinic pattern:

In general, the directions of principal stresses vary continuously from point to point in a
photoelastic model), therefore, occur simultaneously at different regions in the model. Again,
since changes in stresses and stress directions occur in a continuous manner in a body, points at
which the principal stresses have a common direction lie along a continuous curve. For any
orientation of the model, the focus of points at which = 0

forms a continuous black (extinction) curve, called an isoclinic, or an isoclinic fringe. Elsewhere,
for values of not equal to zero, the isochromatic pattern is present. Isoclinics are developed in a
plane polariscope, which is merely a circular polariscope with the quarter-wave plates removed;
the axes of polarization for polarizer and analyzer are crossed. The equation of intensity
distribution in the case of a plane polariscope is
It is immediately evident that the emergent intensity is zero at every point where 0 is zero,
regardless of the value of N . In addition, I = 0 when N = 0, 1, 2, 3,... and this prescribes the
formation of isochromatic fringes in regions of 0. In essence, the plane polariscope yields the
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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

isochromatic pattern, but the intensity of this pattern is modulated by the isoclinic term sin22
Obviously, the pattern is ambiguous, for one cannot distinguish the isoclinic curve from the
isochromatics. This problem can be minimized by employing white-light illumination. In white
light, the isochromatic pattern is everywhere colored, except at points for which N = 0. For f =
0, however, extinction prevails for all wavelengths, and the isoclinic is always black. If the
polarizer and analyzer are maintained in the crossed position and rotated together through 90
while the loading remains constant, an isoclinic fringe will pass through every point in the
model. This is evident since, sometime during the rotation, the polarizer and analyzer axes must
be parallel to the principal-stress directions at each and every point in the model. In order to
determine the principal-stress directions throughout the model, the isoclinic fringes are recorded
for successive angular positions of the polarizer and analyzer.

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

Figure Isoclinic fringes

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

1.5 What makes stress visible?

When a transparent material subjected to stress, it becomes birefringent, that is light propagates
through the material at two different speeds, V1 and V2 and therefore has two values of index of
refraction (n1 and n2) : n1 = V1/C and n2 = V2/C. where C is the speed of light in the vacuum. When
a polarized light wave is transmitted through a region containing stresses and split into slow and
fast waves will occur.
As a result of their differences in the speed or birefringences, these waves will separate. Their
relative distance is related to principle stresses and the thickness.
Another polarizing filter i.e. Analyzer causes the two emerging waves to interfere. The observed
color pattern is the result of their constructive or destructive interference. Each time the relative
retardation equals the multiple integer of a wavelength, a destructive interference will occur and
an isochromatic fringe of order N is observed. Different colors therefore represent different
stress levels.
The observed color fringes are simply level lines of constant stress with N = 0,1,2 etc.
Evaluation techniques

Qualitative evaluation
The simplest tool used for qualitative observation of fringe patterns is a hand held viewer
that permits a user to place the specimen between the two polarizing filters that produce a
color pattern. A retardation vs color chart is used to interpret the observed pattern.
Using this method, one can observe the varying stress level contained in a specimen. A
approximation interpretation is possible only when the retardation R, is below 1
wavelength, since otherwise a given color can reveal multiple stress levels. Clearly this
type of multiple stress reading can be very disturbing and as such, the use of this type of
simple instrument should be strictly implemented to the applications where it is well
established well in advance that the stresses are very small and the measured retardation is
only the fraction of wavelength. Annealed glass for a example, is a low stress material that
can be inspected with the use of this type of simple polariscope observation.

Quantitative measurement
Various methods of quantitative analysis stress measurement available. The selected
method largely depends on the level of accuracy and the processes required by the user.
Here a compensator is used in series with a specimen, adding its own retardation in the
path of light crossing the point. Compensators are used to quantitatively identify the stress
pattern observed. when the retardation of the compensator is equal to the opposite sign of
the measured retardation in the specimen, the total equals zero. The interference are
eliminated for all wavelengths and the black fringes is observed at the point of
measurement. The compensator resembles a linear scale and is calibrated, providing a
known retardation value at each point of the scale.

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

In a production environment, visual quantitative measurements as described above are

often considered too slow and rely on subjective judgment of the user. Truly reliable
measurements require reproducibility and accuracy. To accelerate the process and
eliminate these subjective factors modern inspection methods commonly use "machine
vision" to acquire quantitative stress measurements. Here the CC camera replaces the
human eye. The image of inspected region is acquired through a camera by computer
based frame grabber and the light intensity is measured on an array of 512*512pixels. This
information is then digested and interpreted using digital images analysis software
methods. yielding quantitative stress measurements results for a full field of observation.
The user can prescribe the limits of inspection or threshold of acceptance for each part that
is examined.
The PC based inspection method not only offers quantitative measurements capabilities
but also permits the most systematic inspection procedure by logging the data for
numerous points of inspection compiling the production trends and providing suitable
warnings of impeding stress problems.
1.6 Why is the stress birefringence measured?
The inspection of a transparent materials using polarized light can provide valuable information
about product performance. For the following types of products inspection is required to identify
compliance with product specifications. These specifications are often expressed in retardation
units per unit thickness.
1) Optical elementsOptical elements such a lenses, prisms, optical windows and the compact disks are designed to
perform well defined optical functions. Birefringence due to residual stresses introduced in the
production process will hamper their optical properties and product performance.
Molded and cast polymersMany polymers develop environmental surface crazing resulting in appearance degradation, loss
of transparency and sometimes cracking when excessive stresses are cast during their production
or machining.
2) Oriented polymer filmsA high level of residual stress is not necessarily a defect for these products. In many products
just the opposite in the case. many polymer films will improve their mechanical properties such
as tensile strength, tear strength.

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

2. Fringe Evaluation Techniques:

2.1 Two-dimensional windowed Fourier transform for fringe pattern analysis:
In optical metrology, the output is usually in the form of a fringe pattern, which should be further
analyzed. For example, phase retrieval from fringe patterns is often required. Two traditional
techniques for phase retrieval are phase-shifting technique and carrier technique with Fourier
transform Phase-shifting technique processes the fringe patterns pixel by pixel. Each pixel is
processed separately and does not influence the others. However, this technique is sensitive to
noise. As an example, Fig. 1(a) shows one of four phase-shifted fringe patterns. Phase extracted
using phase-shifting algorithm is shown In Fig. 1(b), which is obviously very noisy. On the
contrary, carrier technique with Fourier transform processes the whole frame of a fringe pattern
at the same time. It is more tolerant to noise, but pixels will influence each other. As an example,
A carrier fringe pattern and its phase extracted using Fourier transform are shown in Fig. 2(a)
and (b), respectively. A better result, if possible, is expected. Thus a compromise between the
pixel-wise processing and global processing is necessary. A natural solution is to process the
fringe patterns locally, or block by block. A smoothing filter is a typical local processor. It
assumes that the intensity values in a small block around each pixel (u,v) are the same and hence
the average value of that block is taken as the value of pixel (u,v) Obviously it is not reasonable
for a fringe pattern since its intensity undulates as a cosine function. Because of this, more
advanced and effective techniques, such as regularized phase tracking (RPT), wavelet transform,
WignerVille distribution and windowed Fourier transform (WFT) , were proposed. In this
paper, principle of WFT will be emphasized and compared with other techniques. Then various
applications of WFT and the implementation issues will be introduced. Figs. 1(c) and 2(c) show
the effectiveness of WFT at a first glance. Again it is emphasized that most of the work has
appeared in various papers and its originality is not claimed. Instead, this paper gives an
overview and more insights of our work on WFT. Before further discussion, a brief definition
and analysis of fringe patterns are given, which will be used throughout the paper. A fringe
pattern can be generally expressed as

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

Where f(x,y), a(x,y), b(x,y), and (x,y) are the recorded intensity, background intensity, fringe
amplitude and phase distribution, respectively. Fringe patterns are classified into four types:
(I)
(II)
(III)
(IV)

exponential phase fringe patterns,

wrapped phase fringe patterns,
carrier fringe patterns and
closed fringe patterns.

Exponential phase fringe patterns, which are analytic signals, are fundamental for fringe
processing and are basic patterns considered in this paper. They can be obtained from, say,
phase shifting technique. For example, given four phase-shifted fringe patterns as

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

2.2 Fringe skeletonisation methods

Fringe skeletonisation is an extension of the fringe analysis performed by eye based on
tracking fringe maxima or minima across the field. The computer algorithm searches for
maxima and minima in the digitised interference pattern [9]. The phase at these points
corresponds to multiples of . Many algorithms exist for tracking along a fringe extremum,
usually based on finding the normal to the maximum gradient of the intensity, or by
following a path of minimum change of intensity. The result is a set of lines, one pixel wide,
which correspond to the extrema, and are often overlaid on the original image for
comparison. The analysis then requires the joining together of lines which are disconnected
(such as near a defect) followed by numbering of the lines. This last step must usually be
performed with user input, especially where lines are discontinuous [10]. The phase at points
lying between fringe extrema is calculated by linear, polynomial or spline interpolation along
a suitable direction in the phase map.
The main advantage of fringe skeletonisation is that it requires only one digitised
interferogram and so temporal drifts of the experimental arrangement have little effect on
the phase measurement. However, the accuracy is approximately /10, the computation
time is long, there is no averaging between many frames to suppress noise and it is
sometimes difficult to assign the correct sign to phase gradients, since the intensity change
can appear the same for both positive and negative gradients.

2.3 Temporal heterodyning methods

In temporal heterodyning, the two interfering wavefronts are formed from sources which
have different frequencies, approximately a few kHz apart [11]. A common technique for
generating these frequencies is to split a laser output into two modes by magnetic
(Zeeman) splitting. The interferogram oscillates at the frequency of the beat between the
two waves. A photodetector is used to sample the signal at points in the interferogram
(there are no CCD detector arrays with high enough bandwidths). The phase can be
measured either as the difference in phase between two detector points or between a
single point and a reference phase signal. Phase distributions can only be measured by
scanning the detector in the image.

2.4 Phase locking methods

In the phase locking technique, the phase of the reference beam is modulated sinusoidally by less
than /2, at a frequency . A bandpass filter centred at is used to sample the intensity at each
point in the interferogram. At points where (x,y) = N the detected intensity averages to zero.
Thus the phase lock technique is a dynamic method of fringe skeletonisation, in real time. The
technique has the same disadvantages as that of fringe skeletonisation.
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Electronic speckle pattern interferometry

Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry (ESPI) is a highly sensitive optoelectronic whole

field technique.

This nondestructive evaluation technique permits measurement of deformations produced in

a test specimen under different loading conditions.

In ESPI the speckle patterns of the object before and after loading are digitally processed to
generate
an
interference
pattern.

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Fringe Pattern Evaluation

4. Some of the examples of fringe pattern observed while tasting the flatness of the
surface
1. Fringe pattern of a flat specimen the linear fringes show that the sample is being
presented to the optical reference surface of the interferometer at an angle.

2. Fringe pattern of a specimen which is convex or concave, shown by the direction of

movement when the sample is being presented to the optical reference surface at an
angle.

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3. Fringe pattern of a flat specimen which is convex or concave, shown by the direction of
fringe movement when the sample is touched. The annular fringe pattern indicates that
the sample is being presented to the optical reference surface in a parallel plane.

4.

Fringe pattern of a sample with peaks and valleys. Again the annular fringe indicates that
the sample is being presented to the optical reference surface in a parallel plane.

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