Encoding information using magnetic microstructures is utilised e.g. in magnetic stripe cards or banknotes. In order to analyse these structures quickly and non-destructively a magneto-optical setup based on the Faraday effect can be used. The Faraday effect states that the plane of polarisation of polarised light is rotated when it passes a Faraday-active material and is subjected to an external magnetic field. Measuring the change of intensity of light passing a set of polarisers allows the calculation of the change of the polarisation angle, which in turn allows drawing conclusions on the magnitude of the external magnetic field. A first setup yielded very good results in the high-speed analysis of patterns with a structure size of about 50 μm. However, the setup's low amplitude resolution only allowed qualitative measurements. In order to find the limitations of this measurement principle with respect to amplitude, temporal, and spatial resolution as well as their interdependence a new setup was purpose-built for characterisation. Its components were examined closely and various methods of signal enhancement were evaluated. The measurements displayed long- and short-term temporal as well as spatial dependencies. The subsequent enhancement of the signal's amplitude resolution came with a loss in temporal or spatial resolution and vice- versa. The interdependence of amplitude, spatial, and amplitude resolution was characterised further and from this a generalised description of their lower bound for a given set of parameters was derived. This should serve as an estimate of the feasibility as well as a build guideline of a similar setup.
Applying laser-speckle techniques in the material sciences
as well as in methods to characterize surface conditions
of specimen has become the method of choice
especially if a non-contacting principle is sought. This
is almost always the case for specimen that are small in
at least one dimension as for example in the material
testing of foils, fibres or micromaterials and certainly
also if elevated test-temperatures are preventing standard
gauges.
In this paper some widely overlooked sources of errors
that - if unavoidable - increase measurement uncertainty
beyond the theoretical limit attainable are discussed
and the magnitude of their influence is detailed.
In particular the following effects are considered: The
laser-source wavelength stability as well as its pointing
stability, the effects caused by so-called schlieren
occuring along the optical path as well as temperature
effects causing changes in the systems geometry, thermally
influencing the optical parameters of the imaging
optics as well as the often overlooked and in most illumination
systems unknown radius of curvature of the
laser wavefronts used to illuminate the specimen.
Small though as these influences seem, they might
contribute significant uncertainties especially in material
testing applications where the strain ε = ▵l/l is to
be determined out of consecutive measurements of usually
small changes in overall length l of the specimens
geometry parameter. Typical values of ε are bounded
by ±2000 ppm (the typical range of Hooke's law for
steel). So values of ▵l on the order of tenth of micrometers
for typical gauge lenghts around 50 mm yield
ppm resolutions for ε. Analyzing the above mentioned
error sources one can quickly see that all of them, if
not taken care of appropriately, carry the potential to
cause significantly larger deviations than the resolution
sought after demands.
In our contribution we present a technique for characterizing the piezo-driven sensor head of a scanning probe
microscope (SPM) using a laser vibrometer. The experimental setup, the signal processing and some experimental
results are described. Furthermore a mechanical model for the sensor head is proposed and verified by the
experimental results. Finally a guidance for an online or offline correction of the position of the sensor head is
presented.
To achieve object matched inverse patterns for the profilometric measurement of the shape of manufactured surfaces, in general at first the shape of a faultless reference object must be known. For these purposes, a separate profilometric measurement cycle employing the reference object as specimen can be executed, if a reference object of adequate quality is available. Based upon this first measurement, an object matched inverse pattern is calculated, and the shape of an arbitrary specimen can then be compared to the ideal shape of the reference object. This paper proposes an algorithm to find inverse patterns for analytically known reference objects based upon ray tracing techniques without requiring a physically existing reference. It further provides methods for the automated derivation of setup parameters for a general profilometric measurement setup.
This document shows the theory and set-up of a non-contact measurement strain gauge, which measures translation
and strain of a mechanically or thermally loaded specimen. The measurement gauge basically consists of
a light source emitting a collimated monochromatic laser beam illuminating the specimen and two CMOS line-
scan cameras, which are arranged symmetrically about the incident laser beam picking up speckled reflection.
The cameras are recording the granular laser speckles in specific time-intervals and the subsequent images are
processed by an algorithm1 implemented in GNU C. As a result one obtains accurate information about changes
in the state of strain and rigid body translation the specimen undergoes2 . Furthermore experimental results are
introduced. The dilatation of a piezo-stack, the elastic modulus of a thin copper wire and the elastic modulus
of a soldering joint are investigated.
Laser speckle based methods for measuring strain within specimen have been devised by several authors using a wide variety of optical arrangements.1-3 Almost all of the proposed methods aim at measuring strain over an extended baselength given, in case of the laser speckle strain gauge4 by the distance at the specimens surface of two impinging beams of laser light that is usually on the order of 5 mm to 50 mm. Others reported on encouraging results using a set-up employing a single illuminated spot at the specimens surface.1, 5 Still the extend the mechanical strain is averaged over is given by the beam diameter which using HeNe lasers is somewhat limited to approximately 1 mm. In this proposed paper we report on the development and application of a laser speckle shift strain sensor that employs a laser beam focussed down to only several tens of micrometers thus allowing a very localized strain reading.5 Although as is known from the fourier optical analysis the average speckle size is inversely proportional to the spot diameter and directly proportional to the projection distance by miniaturizing the sensor a true microscopic strain gauge can be devised. Thus some problems in material physics can by addressed, like measuring strain - mostly caused by thermal imbalance - within an extended micro chip, or measuring mechanical strain within thin fibres or foils, or determining strain caused by the mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients between a copper substrate and AgSn solder in electronic circuits, where averaging the strain reading over extended strain fields would definitely underestimate true mechanical (over-) loads that could lead to catastrophic failures.
KEYWORDS: Digital signal processing, Signal processing, Filtering (signal processing), Atomic force microscopy, Analog electronics, Photodiodes, Receptors, Electronic filtering, Molecules, Temperature metrology
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has proven to be a powerful tool to observe topographical details at the nano- and subnanometer scale. Since this is a rather new technique, new enhancements with faster scanning rates, more accurate measurements and more detailed information were developed. This requires also a higher demand on the signal processing and the controlling software. Operating an AFM with analog driven hardware is often limited by drift and noise problems. Here we overcome this problem by introducing digital signal processing capable of accurately stabilizing the piezo control in the newly developed TREC (topography and recognition imaging) mode. In this mode topographical information and molecular recognition between tip bound ligand and surface bound receptors is simultaneously acquired. The sought information is conveyed by slight variations of the minima and maxima of the signal amplitudes. These variations are very small compared to the maximum possible DC deflection. Furthermore, the DC offset exhibits a rather large drift mostly attributed to temperature changes. To obtain reliable tracking results the oscillating photodiode signal needs to be nonlinearly filtered and efficiently separated into four major components: the maxima, the minima, the spatial average of the maxima, and the spatial average of the minima. The recognition image is then obtained by a nonlinear combination of these four components evaluated at spatial locations derived from the zero-crossings of the differentiated signal resulting from a modified differentiator FIR filter. Furthermore, to reliably estimate the DC drift an exponential tracking of the extrema by a first-order IIR filter is performed. The applicability of the proposed algorithms is demonstrated for biotin and avidin.
This paper discusses some experimental results obtained by a force sensor utilizing the elasto-optical effect within a Nd:YAG crystal. The optical set-up, the force application system and the signal pick-up with a very high speed InGaAs photodetector is detailed. Some calibration results for forces in the mN up to N range are given.
There is a class of material testing problems that lend itself to a non-contacting way of obtaining the measurand. Especially for specimens, that are small to very small in one or two dimensions (e.g. thin foils or small diameter fibers), or are heated to high temperatures a non-contacting way of testing is imperative. In this paper we report on the theory and applicability of a laser speckle shift displacement gradient measurement system as well as practical results obtained with the discussed system. Some of the results presented can not be obtained with other than optical means, because of the fragility or the physical dimensions of the specimen.
In this paper we report on the theory and applicability of a laser speckle shift strain measurement system as well as some practical results obtained with the discussed system from fibres, foils and standardised specimen. Some of the results presented can not be obtained with other than optical means, because of the fragilty and the small physical dimensions of the specimen.
THere is an increasing necessity to record the deformation characteristics of microelements due to their increasing demand for engineering applications being used in the automotive industry, micromachines, special sensors etc. The data required are either thermal or mechanical such as Young's moduli, stress-strain values, creep-, fatigue- and fracture data. In this investigation two non-contacting laseroptical strain sensors are being used to determine deformation data in combination with a special designed microtensile machine. The laseroptical strain sensors are applied to determine non-contacting strain values including a laser interferometric system with a high spatial resolution and a laseroptical speckle correlation method with high resolution.
KEYWORDS: Speckle, Correlation function, Digital signal processing, Laser processing, Optical signal processing, Speckle pattern, Quantization, Sensors, Signal processing, Optical filters
Some material testing procedures do require the determination of surface element displacements and displacement gradients through non-contacting preferably optical techniques able to operate at relatively high measuring rates. They are essential in particular load-dynamic testing of mechanical properties of so called new materials such as ceramics matrix compounds (CMC) which show creep-effects at their usual operating temperature beyond 1000 degrees Celsius but also testing of thin films down to thicknesses in the range of microns where contacting methods are clearly prohibitive. In this paper we present a displacement sensor system and the signal processing necessary to determine engineering strain within specimen which employs both optical and digital signal processing to form -- in a hybrid way -- a two-dimensional cross-correlation function used to estimate feature displacements on speckled images drawn from surface inspection. It is further shown, that optimal Lloyd-Max quantizers implemented in the analog- to-digital converter (ADC) used in combination with a particular digital correlation algorithm are able to yield a further increase of the measuring rates compared with standard digital correlation techniques.
This paper is concerned with a method of non-contacting measurement of mechanical strain within specimen. It describes a new optical set-up to perform high speed digital laser- speckle correlation with the ultimate aim to deduce surface element displacements associated with the translation of laser-speckles emanating from those surface elements. The novel optical set-up combined with the application of line scan cameras attached to digital signal- or very fast general- purpose processors allows measurement rates that for most practical purposes are only limited by the integration time of the camera necessary to obtain properly exposed images. Instead of obtaining a two-dimensional vector by searching for the best space-lag for a digitally calculated cross- correlation estimate of the initial and translated speckle images a single component of that vector parallel to the straining direction is obtained by finding the space-lag of optically preprocessed almost one-dimensional speckle fields. The necessary optical preprocessing is performed in the Fourier-plane of the imaging optics. This way the numerical complexity of the algorithm is greatly reduced resulting in lower processing time per frame. System considerations for practical strain measurements are detailed and the measured sensitivities are presented.
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