The basic spin filter for interferometric fringe patterns is improved and developed into several new versions for different applications. These spin filters can filter off random noise efficiently and have almost no blurring effect and phase distortion for the fringe patterns. First, they find the local fringe tangent direction, and then they apply a one-dimensional low-pass filter on this direction. In this way the spin filters can separate easily and clearly high-frequency noise from a real fringe signal with nearly zero frequency. The new spin filters are suitable not only for various fringe patterns but also for wrapped-phase, line-grating, and cross-grating patterns, which are impossible by common filters.

Noise reduction is one of the most exciting problems in automatic fringe processing. We propose a two-dimensional (2-D) envelope transform for normalization of fringe patterns, coupled with spin filtering, to construct so-called noise-free normalized fringe patterns. The 2-D envelope transform uses correct fringe intensity envelopes for normalization of fringe patterns, i.e., for making the fringe background and amplitude constant over the whole field. Spin filtering is applied to fringe patterns for removal of random noise taking into account fringe flow. With spin filtering and the 2-D envelope transform, a noise-free normalized fringe pattern is constructed for postprocessing. Based on this improved fringe pattern, two local pixel transforms for strain extraction from a single moiré pattern are developed, in which the digital pure secondary moiré method is improved and the strain-field image method with division is developed.

The fringe-orientation information of an interferometric fringe pattern is provided in the form of a fringe-orientation map by spin filtering. The fringe-orientation information is an important feature of fringe patterns and is helpful in many fringe-pattern processing algorithms. With the help of a fringe-orientation map the two-dimensional derivative-sign binary-fringe method is developed to extract fringe skeletons from a fringe pattern with an arbitrary fringe distribution. This fringe skeleton extraction method does not require thresholds and a thinning process. It is relatively robust and highly accurate.

ABSTRACT--Grating techniques are used to determine the three-dimensional deformation and the tangential strain of sheet metal. A grating is fixed on the surface and taken by stereo CCD cameras in different deformation states. By suitable line-following software, the grating coordinates in the images are determined with subpixel accuracy. Using photogrammetric methods, the three-dimensional coordinates are calculated from the image coordinates. The strain usually is determined by means of a deformation gradient, which is calculated from every deformed triangle. In this paper, the gradient is determined in the center of four neighboring meshes using a polynomial approximation of the displacement function in a reference position. The influence of the nontangential deformation is considered. By simulation, a flat sheet metal is deformed to a rotational symmetric surface. The difference of the known exact strain is compared with the numerically derived strain with respect to different grating pitches. The proposed method yields good results even in the case of large spatial deformation. It is applied to the deformation of a hatlike test specimen.

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