<title>Parametric optical surface roughness measurement by means of polychromatic speckle autocorrelation</title>

Abstract

A method for determining surface roughness of engineering surfaces that is applicable to in-process measurements under harsh circumstances of industrial production plants (e.g. vibrations, humidity) is introduced. The rough surface is illuminated with polychromatic laser light. The angular distribution of scattered light intensities, i.e. a polychromatic speckle pattern, is the result of an incoherent superposition of monochromatic speckle intensities. The angular dispersion leads to increasing speckle widths with an increasing distance to the optical axis an effect called speckle elongation. This gives rise to a radial structure of the speckle pattern. However, with increasing surface roughness the radial structure vanishes because of a decreasing similarity of the monochromatic speckle patterns of the different wavelengths. The markedness of this effect is analyzed by digital image processing algorithms, e.g. the procedure of polychromatic speckle autocorrelation. The latest approach to an in-process roughness measurement device was made by the use of singlemode fiber-pigtailed laser diodes in order to supply a trichromatic, temporally partially coherent laser beam. A brief introduction to the theoretical background is followed by the presentation of the experimental setup. The image processing algorithms for calculating an optical roughness measure from digitalized speckle patterns are explained, and first results of surface roughness determination are presented.