Optical triangulation method for height measurements on water surfaces

Abstract

Optical triangulation methods based on a laser light sheet and a camera are frequently used as a surface measurement technique in a wide range of applications. They allow for the fast accurate determination of height profiles, based on relatively simple hardware and software configurations. Moreover, they can be implemented very efficiently and are especially suited for measurements on moving objects such as products on an assembly line. The study presented in the paper describes the adaptation of laser light sheet optical triangulation techniques to the task of water level profile measurements in hydromechanics experimental facilities. The properties of water surfaces necessitate several modifications of optical triangulation techniques to make them applicable: The mirror-like reflection properties of water surfaces form a contradiction to the assumption of diffuse reflection, on which standard light sheet triangulation techniques are based; this problem can be circumvented by using a diffuse reflecting projection plane to capture the mirror-like reflection of the laser line from the water surface. Due to the angle of incidence law, however, water surface tilts caused by waves will usually cause a strong degradation of the quality of the results when using reflected light; this effect can largely be compensated by processing max-store images derived from short image sequences rather than single images. These extensions of optical triangulation turned out to be crucial for the applicability of the method on water surfaces. Besides the theoretical concept and a sensitivity analysis of the method, a system configuration is outlined, and the results of a number of practical experiments are shown and discussed.