Spatially resolved stress measurements in materials with polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography: image acquisition and processing aspects

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) can non-destructively map internal stress distributions in scattering materials by analyzing fringe patterns for quantitative stress evaluation.

Contribution

It introduces a method for denoising and analyzing PS-OCT images to quantitatively assess internal stresses in materials, expanding the application of PS-OCT beyond transparency constraints.

Findings

PS-OCT effectively maps stress in scattering materials.

Fringe pattern analysis enables quantitative stress evaluation.

Method is non-destructive and contactless.

Abstract

We demonstrate that polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) is suitable to map the stress distribution within materials in a contactless and non-destructive way. In contrast to transmission photoelasticity measurements the samples do not have to be transparent but can be of scattering nature. Denoising and analysis of fringe patterns in single PS-OCT retardation images are demonstrated to deliver the basis for a quantitative whole-field evaluation of the internal stress state of samples under investigation.