Development of standard measurement chain for full-field optical strain measurement methods

Optical techniques for full-field displacement/strain measurement are a powerful set of tools for use in defining the performance, design optimization, reliability and safety of various types of components, products and machines. The quality of the measurement data generated by optical techniques is strongly dependent on the instrumentation and procedures. Thus, there is a significant need to develop standardized tests that are applicable across the spectrum of optical techniques of strain measurement. This requires the description of a common standard measurement chain including: (1) definition of standard physical and virtual materials; (2) gathering experimental or simulated primary data (fringe/image map); (3) deconvolution phase maps from these data (numerical procedures); (4) calculation of required physical quantities from phase maps (numerical procedures including data scaling). This scheme supports a calibration process for both instrumentation and procedures. Validation of this general methodology was performed using an example of displacement data gathered by grating interferometry followed by data processing scheme.