2009 Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 103-108
A method for measuring two-dimensional stress components is proposed. A two-dimensional birefringent specimen placed in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer is observed using a CCD camera equipped with a micro-retarder Array. The light emerging from the Mach-Zehnder interferometer contains the information of the principal stress difference, principal stress sum and the principal direction. The distribution of the Stokes parameters of this light vector is obtained from a single image since the CCD camera equipped with a micro-retarder array can record multiple information as a single image by a single exposure. Then, the distribution of the stress components can be evaluated from the Stokes parameters. It is expected that the proposed method can be applied to time-varying phenomena since multiple exposures are not necessary for the completion of stress analysis.
