The surface structure, especially the roughness, has a significant influence on numerous parameters, such as friction and wear, and therefore estimates the quality of technical systems. In the last decades, a broad variety of surface roughness measurement methods were developed. A destructive measurement procedure or the lack of feasibility of online monitoring are the crucial drawbacks of most of these methods. This article proposes a new non-contact method for measuring the surface roughness that is straightforward to implement and easy to extend to online monitoring processes. The key element is a liquid-crystal-based spatial light modulator, integrated in an interferometric setup. By varying the imprinted phase of the modulator, a correlation between the imprinted phase and the fringe visibility of an interferogram is measured, and the surface roughness can be derived. This paper presents the theoretical approach of the method and first simulation and experimental results for a set of surface roughnesses. The experimental results are compared with values obtained by an atomic force microscope and a stylus profiler.

Gauge factors of fibre Bragg grating (FBG)-based strain sensors that had been inscribed into three different types of optical fibres, which differ in core diameters and doping concentrations, were determined at room temperature with high accuracy. Repeated measurements were carried out with several samples of each type of fibre to allow statistical evaluations. For each type, the gauge factors were measured in two configurations: when the bare fibres were glued on a specimen at the location of the FBG and when they were vertically suspended and not bonded to any structure at the location of the FBG. By combining the results of both configurations, the strain transfer ratio of the gluing process and the strain-optic coefficient, peff, of the different types of fibres were determined. The strain-optic coefficient was found to vary up to 1.5% for the different types of optical fibres. The strain transfer ratio was obtained to be close to unity (>99%), showing the high quality of the gluing technique employed. The investigations demonstrate that highly accurate strain sensing is possible with fibre-optic strain sensors. The results are important for the development of accurate and reliable attaching techniques for coated sensor fibres and fibre-optic sensor patches.

This Letter proposes a novel interferometric approach for the in-plane rotation measurement. With a simple and compact measurement system, the rotation angle and its direction can be determined simultaneously in real time by applying the spatial carrier frequency. Besides, the phase unwrapping process is not required for the angular evaluation, which simplifies the data processing procedure. Theoretically, the relationship between the in-plane rotation and the phase change distribution has been deduced to demonstrate the possibility of this interferometric method. Practically, the preliminary experiments have been carried out to verify the feasibility of this approach and quantify the measurement accuracy.

This paper suggests the use of adjustable aperture multiplexing (AAM), a method which is able to introduce multiple tunable carrier frequencies into a three-beam electronic speckle pattern interferometer to measure the out-of-plane displacement and its first-order derivative simultaneously. In the optical arrangement, two single apertures are located in the object and reference light paths, respectively. In cooperation with two adjustable mirrors, virtual images of the single apertures construct three pairs of virtual double apertures with variable aperture opening sizes and aperture distances. By setting the aperture parameter properly, three tunable spatial carrier frequencies are produced within the speckle pattern and completely separate the information of three interferograms in the frequency domain. By applying the inverse Fourier transform to a selected spectrum, its corresponding phase difference distribution can thus be evaluated. Therefore, we can obtain the phase map due to the deformation as well as its slope of the test surface from two speckle patterns which are recorded at different loading events. By this means, simultaneous and dynamic measurements are realized. AAM has greatly simplified the measurement system, which contributes to improving the system stability and increasing the system flexibility and adaptability to various measurement requirements. This paper presents the AAM working principle, the phase retrieval using spatial carrier frequency, and preliminary experimental results.

Zusammenfassung Eine vollständige Charakterisierung von pharmazeutischen Tabletten besteht nicht nur in der Analyse der chemischen Zusammensetzung, sondern auch in der Untersuchung der Fertigung der inneren Struktur und der Oberflächenstruktur. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die Oberflächenrauheit von Tabletten an Originalpräparaten und Generika mittels Angularer Speckle Korrelation (ASK) zu bestimmen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen unterschiedliche Rauheitswerte bei Tabletten mit gleichem Wirkstoff bei verschiedenen Trägerstoffen. Berührungslose Speckle-Rauheitsmessung könnte eingesetzt werden, um die Regelung des Produktionsprozesses zu verbessern, z. B. während die Tabletten aus Pulver gepresst werden.