RGB Photoelasticity: Review and Improvements

This paper considers the main developments of RGB photoelasticity with reference to the maximum measurable retardation. In this paper, a new procedure based on the standard error function evaluated on a subset of the calibration array is also proposed and experimentally tested. The experiments show that the filament lamp makes it possible to find retardations until approximately 4 fringe orders while the fluorescent lamp makes it possible to determine higher fringe orders (12 fringe orders in this paper) owing to the discrete spectrum of the source. The paper shows that, by using the incandescent lamp, the primary limiting factor is the lack of modulation of the R, G and B signals whereas, by using the fluorescent lamp, the limitation of the maximum fringe order derives mainly from the gradient of the fringes and the procedure of search of the retardation.