Surface roughness measurement with optical fibers

Abstract

The development of a new method of surface roughness measurement utilizing optical fibers is discussed., Two general types of fiber-optic roughness measurement are presented, intensity-based and polarization-based, which require use of either multimode or single-mode polarization-preserving optical fibers. Some configurations, including different constructions of a fiber-optic head, and the specific requirements for optical fibers are also discussed. The data obtained from the intensity and polarization measurements are correlated with some roughness parameters.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>