Measuring thickness change of transparent plate by electronic speckle pattern interferometry and digital image correlation

The thickness change of transparent plates was measured by electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) method and digital image correlation (DIC) method. An out-of-plane ESPI system was developed based on the Michelson interferometer, and a new thickness measurement method was designed, which is on the basis of Snell's law of refraction and DIC. The main principles and experimental procedures of these two methods were presented. The thickness change of polymethyl specimens under uniaxial tensile loading were measured by the optical techniques and compared with each other. The results reveal that the data obtained with DIC method achieve better linearity than ESPI.