Application of the FFT method for the quantitative extraction of information from high-resolution interferometric and photoelastic data

Abstract

This paper describes the application of a digital Fourier transform to phase encoded intensity distribution. Attention is drawn to a method of extracting quantitative information automatically from the interferometric fringe data. To achieve this, a set of carrier fringes has been added to interferometric fringe data. This has made it possible to form a phase map using a FFT (fast Fourier transform) algorithm. A minimum spanning tree (MST) phase unwrapping strategy has been used to create a contiguous map of the whole fringe field. Finally, the measurement parameter related to the fringe field has been calculated from one single image. Experimental results are given for the burner flames, a compressible flow and photoelastic fringe data. It has been shown that the methods developed have the potential for use as reflection analysis systems suitable for applications to non-stationary objects and complicated fringe fields.