Review of RGB photoelasticity

•Twenty years of RGB Photoelasticity and applications.•From the basic formulation to the newest regularization and scanning procedures.•The state of the art of the RGB Photoelasticity for new horizons.

Automatic methods of photoelasticity have had a significant progress with the development of automatic acquisition and image processing methods. This article concerns RGB photoelasticity, which allows the determination of the photoelastic retardation using, usually, a single acquisition of the isochromatic fringes in white light by a colour camera. In particular, the article presents an overview of the main characteristics of RGB photoelasticity that is influence of the quarter-wave plate error, number of acquisitions, type of light source, determination of low and high fringe orders, methods for searching the retardation, scanning procedures, calibration on a material different from that under test, combined use of the RGB and phase shifting methods. A short section on the applications of RGB photoelasticity completes the article.