Design, Construction and Testing of a Portable Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry System for Contouring Applications

Optical surface metrology techniques offer many advantages over conventional methods. Some of these advantages include a greater sensitivity and a whole field analysis that is non-contract. They also offer greater lateral and vertical resolution and are not subject to electromagnetic influence. Despite these many advantages, there has been reluctance in industry to adopt these techniques. This reluctance can be attributed to the use of high-power lasers which are considered dangerous, the expense of the systems and complicated operation and analysis procedures. The objective of the research described in this thesis was to utilise recent developments in laser diodes, data acquisition techniques and software to develop a portable miniature system suitable for industrial use. The system described here has utilised different aspects of ESPI contouring design in the past, to produce a system, which has been optimised for industrial use. The system is stable, portable and robuse. The software used was designed to be user friendly and to allow for efficient data analysis. The system is capable of producing fringe patterns that represent the surface contour of an object under examination. The system has been tested extensively with satisfactory results. Proposals for improvement and further work have been made in the conclusion of the thesis.