Vibration analysis and non-destructive testing with real-time shearography

Real-time laser speckle shearography coupled with vibration stressing is shown to be an effective means of vibration analysis and non-destructive testing. The shearograms are modulated by a system of live fringes. These fringes are shown to be described by the zeroth-order Bessel function of the first kind and their visibility decreases with increasing fringe order. In vibration analysis, the instantaneous fringe pattern depicts the out-of-plane surface displacement gradient of the object surface at various resonance modes. In non-destructive testing, the flaw depth in a component can be determined without having to determine fringe orders. There is good agreement between the results obtained using the method and those from theory and time-average holography. A major advantage of real-time shearography is its facility for continuous assessment of a vibrating object without the need for secondary shearogram reconstruction.