Phase-shifting speckle interferometry

Abstract

Speckle patterns have high frequency phase data, which make it difficult to find the absolute phase of a single speckle pattern; however, the phase of the difference between two correlated speckle patterns can be determined. This is done by applying phase-shifting techniques to speckle interferometry, which will quantitatively determine the phase of double-exposure speckle measurements. The technique uses computer control to take data and calculate phase without an intermediate recording step. The randomness of the speckle causes noisy data points which are removed by data processing routines. One application of this technique is finding the phase of deformations, where up to ten waves of wavefront deformation can easily be measured. Results of deformations caused by tilt of a metal plate and a disbond in a honeycomb structure brazed to an aluminum plate are shown.