Development of pressure sensors for the instrumentation of experimental aerodynamic facilities has traditionally concentrated on electrical techniques. An improvement in the currently attainable temporal and spatial resolution in pressure measurement would be beneficial in the characterization of turbulent flows behind turbine rotor stages, for example. We present results obtained in a turbine test rig from a fiber optic pressure sensor based upon the interferometric response of an extrinsic cavity formed between the interrogation fiber and a reflective diaphragm. We discuss the design trade offs, optical interrogation and temperature sensitivity of such a configuration, and demonstrate the success of the design in small-scale shock tube experiments. We then describe the application of the sensor in a full scale turbine test facility in which pressure signals with frequency components exceeding 200 kHz were obtained.

We describe a high-speed digital speckle pattern interferometer incorporating a line-scan camera and a waveguide phase modulator for the measurement of complex deformation (vibration phase and amplitude) at audio acoustic frequencies. Experimental data show continuous phase-stepped recovery of out-of-plane surface deformation in one dimension, obtained at 100 kHz with 2pi/20-rad (0.02-mum) displacement resolution, for surface velocities of 3.2 mm s>(-1) .

The use of holography in the optical inspection and measurement of three-dimensional objects, now known as hologrammetry, places considerable emphasis on geometric precision and high resolution in the reconstructed real image. A discussion of the factors which dictate image fidelity in reconstruction must include an assessment of potential sources of optical aberration. In this paper the authors consider the aberrations introduced when the refractive index of the medium in which the subject is located differs from that in which the real image is replayed, addressing specifically their quantitative evaluation in relation to underwater hologrammetry.

The influence of reflector losses attracts little discussion in standard treatments of the Fabry-Perot interferometer yet may be an important factor contributing to errors in phase-stepped demodulation of fiber optic Fabry-Perot (FFP) sensors. We describe a general transfer function for FFP sensors with complex reflection coefficients and estimate systematic phase errors that arise when the asymmetry of the reflected fringe system is neglected, as is common in the literature. The measured asymmetric response of higher-finesse metal-dielectric FFP constructions corroborates a model that predicts systematic phase errors of 0.06 rad in three-step demodulation of a low-finesse FFP sensor (R = 0.05) with internal reflector losses of 25%.

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