Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2014

Porto, Portugal, 30 June - 2 July 2014

A. Cunha, E. Caetano, P. Ribeiro, G. Mller (eds.)
ISSN: 2311-9020; ISBN: 978-972-752-165-4

Design of a vibration probe based on high-speed digital holography

Julien Poittevin1, Pascal Picart2, Franois Gautier2, Charles Pezerat2
IRT Jules VERNE, Chemin du Chaffault, 44340 BOUGUENAIS, FRANCE
2
LUNAM Universit, Universit du Maine, CNRS UMR 6613, LAUM,
Avenue Olivier Messiaen, 72085 LE MANS CEDEX 9, France
email: julien.poittevin@irt-jules-verne.fr, pascal.picart@univ-lemans.fr, francois.gautier@univ-lemans.fr,
charles.pezerat@univ-lemans.fr
1

ABSTRACT: Structural vibrations can be measured with optical digital holography. Such a method provides measurements
with a very high spatial resolution. Using a high speed camera, it can also be implemented in the time domain to investigate non
stationary problems. Parameters constraining the design of the set-up are discussed and optimization rules are provided through
a numerical simulation to establish guidelines. Experimental results obtained for a polymer beam, excited with a shaker and at
high frame rate recording, confirm the suitability of the proposed approach.
KEY WORDS: Digital holography; Full field measurement; Vibration field.
1

INTRODUCTION

Structural vibrations are usually measured using

accelerometers or laser-vibrometers. Accelerometer is an
intrusive sensor as vibrometer doesn't. Both provide pointwise measurements. So as to obtain a full field imaging of the
vibration, a x-y scanning of the surface of the structure is then
required. This operation needs long time and the excitation
must be stationary. To avoid any scanning of the surface,
optical digital holography [1-2] is an alternative way because
it provides contact less full-field measurements. In previous
works, such method was applied to stationary vibration fields
[3-9].
Historically, vibration analysis with optical holographic
techniques started with the works of Powell and Stetson [10],
who first established the principle of time-averaging and the
possibility of studying vibrations. The first applications were
described, showing a large variety of possibilities: tympanic
investigations [11], vibration measurements of plates [12],
mode discrimination or study of loudspeaker membranes [13].
Hybrid techniques combining heterodyne holography with
time-averaging or frequency shifting were also proposed
recently [14,15]. Other vibration regimes can also be used to
study vibrations: pulsed and pseudo-pulsed stroboscopic
regime, or quasi-time-averaging regime. At LAUM, such
methods were investigated in the past years. As illustrative
examples, figure 1 shows the time averaging method applied
to the detection of default in the resonant mode of a dome
loudspeaker [16] ; Fig.1 b) illustrates the stroboscopic pulsed
regime applied to the investigation of high amplitude auto
oscillation of a clarinet reed under playing conditions [17];
Fig.1c) shows the measurement of the amplitude of a
loudspeaker using the pseudo-pulsed regime [18]. Fig.1 d)
shows application of the quasi-time averaging regime to the
visualization of acoustic waves propagating at the surface of
human skin [19]. Simultaneous multidimensional vibration
measurements are also possible [20].

Figure 1 : Illustration of holograms result. (a) Vibration mode

of a loudspeaker [16]. (b) Amplitude auto oscillation
displacement of a clarinet reed [17]. (c) Amplitude
displacement of a loudspeaker [18]. (d) Sequence of 30
successive images over time of surface acoustic waves on the
human skin [19].
The stationary regime is a particular useful case for
investigating the structure vibration behavior. Usually,
characterization of structures under operational or real
functioning conditions requires analysis in the time domain.
As examples, problems that can not be addressed by a
stationary approach are: vibrations of panels induced by hydro
or aeroacoustic sources, structural vibration induced by
squeak and rattle noise. A full field and contact less method
having the capability of measuring vibrations at their time
scale and evolution has then to be invented. Nowadays,
performances of high power continuous wave lasers (>6W)
and high speed CMOS sensor (rate up to 100 kHz) have been
improved very significantly since 10 years. These new
technologies give the opportunity of bringing back digital
holography and vibration analysis to build an adapted
approach for analyzing transient phenomena. We would like

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Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2014

to take the opportunity of the EURODYN 2014 meeting to

present the design of a vibration probe based on high-speed
digital holography and adapted to the investigation of non
stationary vibration problems.
2
2.1

PRINCIPLE OF THE HOLOGRAPHIC METHOD

Hologram recording

Basically, digital holography consists in recording an

interference pattern using a sensor arranged as a matrix of
pixels. In the set-up, the structure under interest is illuminated
by a laser beam. The laser beam is then scattered and
diffracted by the object to give a wave propagating to the
recording sensor (Fig.2).

R( x, y ) = ar exp( 2i (u 0 x + v0 y ))

(2-3)

with ar the modulus and (u0,v0) the carrier spatial

frequencies. The recording sensor includes MN pixels with
pitches px=py. We consider here the case of off-axis digital
holography for which (u0,v0)(0,0). The total intensity
received by the recording sensor is the digital hologram,
written as:
2

H = O + R + OR* + O * R

(2-4)
A typical example of such a digital hologram is shown in
Fig.3. It appears as a random pattern encoding both the
amplitude and phase of the object wave. Decoding of the
hologram by a numerical reconstruction provides the
amplitude and phase of interest.

Figure 3 : Digital hologram recorded by the sensor

Figure 2 : Basic scheme for the optical set-up
In the case of digital Fresnel holography, the object of
interest is illuminated by a laser beam having a wavelength .
The recording plane is localized at distance d0, in a free space
geometry. The object surface generates a wave front that will
be noted according to Eq. (2-1):

A( X , Y ) = A0 ( X , Y ) exp[i 0 ( X , Y )] ,

(2-1)

Amplitude A0 describes the object reflectivity and phase 0

describes its surface or shape. Phase 0 is random and
uniformly distributed over the range ]-,+]. When taking
into account the diffraction theory within the Fresnel
approximations, the object wave diffracted at distance d0 is
expressed by the following relationship [21]:
i 2
iexp(2id 0 / )
exp
O(x, y,d 0 ) =
x + y2
d0
d
0

i
A( X , Y )exp d (X
0

+ Y 2

2.2

Hologram to displacement field

The recorded hologram includes complex information related

to the amplitude and phase. The phase is proportional to the
optical path i.e. the distance between the object and the
sensor. The displacement can be calculated from the phase
according to [22]:
u z ( x, y ) =

(2-2)

2i

(xX + yY )dXdY
exp
d
0

In the recording plane, the object wave is mixed with a

plane reference wave written as:

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The decoding of the hologram is performed by numerically

calculating the diffraction along a distance related to d0. For
vibration metrology and analysis, the optical phase of the
numerically diffracted field is the main parameter of interest.
Vibration field reconstruction is calculated from the optical
phase variation between two instants. For this, the phase is
extracted from reconstruted holograms. The optical phase
variation between two successive holograms is proportional to
the displacement of the structure between these two instants.

( x, y )
,
2 1 + cos

(2-5)

where uz is displacement field, the optical wavelength, the

illumination angle, and optical phase change.
With two successive phase maps, a phase difference can be
calculated. This phase is calculated through an inverse tangent
function and is then obtained modulo 2. It exhibits
numerical fringes that can be interpreted as contour lines of
the vibration. These numerical fringes need to be unwrapped
to obtain a continuous phase map being directly proportional
to the displacement field (cf. Fig.4).

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2014

Figure 4 : Illustration of the digital hologram post-processing

This measurement method requires a high spatial and
temporal resolution to correctly record the vibration field.
Many parameters of the set-up are governing the
recording/reconstruction process. So, the optimization of the
digital holographic probe requires a numerical simulation to
investigate the influence of these parameters.
3

DESIGN OF THE METROLOGICAL TOOLS

The numerical simulation was developed by taking into

account the full acquisition and reconstruction process,
starting from the structure excitation, optical wave
propagation, interference pattern recording and processing, to
the final vibration field recovery. Fig. 5 shows the scheme of
the full simulation.
This numerical simulation is illustrated in the paper by
considering an alloy plate submitted to a shock which
generates a transient vibration of the structure.

An error is evaluated by comparing the theoretical and the

reconstructed vibration fields. This error is the key to optimize
the probe sensitivity according to the parameters.
The temporal and spatial parameters of the recording are
related to the pixel size and pixel number. The temporal
sampling is imposed by two factors. The first is the frame rate
which defines a periodic time between holograms. The second
factor is the exposition time, which corresponds to the time
during which the sensor is accumulating photons. This
temporal integration influences the error-free vibration
reconstruction from a digital holographic sequence.
For the simulation, these parameters were chosen: exposure
time at 10s, frame rate at 100 kHz, and spatial resolution at
512512 pixels.
The aluminum plate is considered to be supported at its
edges, and excited by a local impact [23-24]. The excitation is
performed at any location, and a bandwidth between 100 Hz
to 20 kHz. Physical parameters are: size of 0.3 x 0.5 meter, a
thickness of 5 mm, Young modulus at 70 Gpa, a Poisson ratio
of 0.33 and a damping ratio of 2.10-3. The displacement field
is calculated by using a truncated modal basis of the plate and
is considered to be the exact displacement in the following. As
shown in fig 6, the displacement obtained at the impact point
exhibits large amplitude at the first instants. For large
amplitude (>>), the optical phase becomes wrapped, because
the gauge of the method is related to the optical wavelength
(micrometric range). To illustrate this, three examples at three
different amplitude levels are considered. Fig 6 shows these
three instants in the time evolution of the displacement at the
impact point.

Figure 6 : Vibration magnitude at the impact point vs time

evolution

For the T1 instant, the displacement field from t=0 to t=T1 is

reconstructed and the results are presented in Fig 7.

Figure 5 : Scheme for simulating the holographic process

Physical parameters included in the model are related to,
first, mechanical inputs of the vibrating plate (young modulus,
Poisson ratio, thickness, modal density), second, optical wave
propagation (laser illumination, diffraction, interferences),
third, recording process (sensor with spatial and temporal
rates), last, numerical post-processing to calculate the
vibration field.

(a)

(b)

Figure 7 : Simulation result at T1

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Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2014

Fig. 7a) shows the reconstructed displacement field (meter)

and Fig. 7b) represents the error map of the reconstructed
displacement, which is calculated using the difference
between the exact and the reconstructed displacements. A
distortion is observed on the reconstruction, at the impact
point. This distortion is due to the time integration of the
vibration during the exposure time, where the slope of the
motion is very high (see Fig 6). The slope is related to the
velocity of the struture between two instants. This slope
depends on the modal density of the structure, the damping
coefficient and the nature of the impact. So, for a few specific
practical cases, the post-correction of this distortion might be
required to get an error-free measurement.
Fig.8 and 9 shows the different maps few instants later, T2 and
T3.
Figure 10 : Experimental set-up

(a)

(b)

Figure 8 : Simulation result at T2 instant

No distortion on the measurement is observable because the
slope effect is not significant.

(a)

(b)

Figure 9 : Simulation result at T3 instant

The results presented in Fig. 8 and 9 show that few instants
after the shock, there is no error in the vibration measurement.
This numerical analysis exhibits the effect of the temporal
integration in the vibration measurement. When the vibration
field has a rapid time evolution, an error-free measurement
might be not obtained. Then, for the few first intants of the
vibration, compensation algorithms have to be developped to
overcome this effect.
4
4.1

EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
Experimental set-up

The experimental set-up is described in Fig. 10. The light

source is a green laser (=532nm) with maximum power at
6W (VERDI). The studied structure is a polymer beam,
suspended at one of its end, and excited by a shaker at its
center. The light diffracted from the illuminated beam onto
the recording area constitues the object wave.

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The laser beam issued from the laser is separated into the
reference and the object wave by use of a polarizing beam
splitter (PBS). The polarization of the object wave is rotated
from 90 to be parallel with that of the reference wave, so as
to get contrasted interferences. Using a lens assembly and
mirrors, the object wave is then spatially expanded to
illuminate the structure. Negative lenses are inserted between
the object and the sensor and permit to increase the studied
area, regarding the Shannon condition of the hologram
recording [25]. This negative lens induces a change in the
object-to-sensor distance, which is now d0.
From the polarizing beam splitter, the reference wave is
spatially expanded and filtered by using a telecentric system
associated to a micrometric pinhole, to get a smooth and plane
wave. This wave remains unperturbed by the vibration
structure. The object and reference waves are mixed with the
50% cube splitter to produces interferences in the sensor
plane.
The recording sensor is a high-speed camera (Phantom V5),
with pixel size 14.8m and a maximum resolution of
MN=10241024 pixels. At the full spatial resolution, the
maximum frame rate is 1200Hz.
4.2

Reconstruction

The reconstruction of the amplitude and phase of the encoded

object is based on the numerical calculation of light
diffraction [26]. The reconstructed field at distance d0 is
given by the following relationship, the unnecessary factors
and phase terms being removed:
Ar (n , m ) =

k = K 1 l = L 1

H (lp

, kp y )

, (4-1)
i 2 2

l n km
l p x + k 2 p y2 exp 2i +
exp

'
L K
0

where l, k, n, m are indices corresponding to the discrete

versions of X, Y, x, y, respectively and =d0/Lpx,
=d0/Kpy are the sampling pitches in the reconstructed
plane. Due to Shannon conditions, the minimum distance that
can be set in the algorithm is given by
d0max{Npx2/,Mpy2/}, and depends on the spatial
resolution of the sensor. The computation leads to complexvalued results, from which the amplitude image (modulus)

k =0

l =0

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Structural Dynamics, EURODYN 2014

and the phase image (argument) can be extracted. The

numerical reconstructions were performed with K=L=2048.
4.3

Harmonic excitation

We aim at presenting demonstration of the potential of the

proposed approach by considering first the case of a harmonic
excitation. The beam is excited by a sinusoidal signal at
925Hz. Holograms are recorded with MN=719128 pixels
with a frame rate at 6400Hz.
Fig. 11a,b shows respectively the wrapped and unwrapped
phase differences between two instants. The unwrapped phase
is proportional to the displacement field (eq. 2-5). In this
experiment, the illuminated area is 92cm2.

Figure 12 : Displacement map vs time evolution

A mechanical wave-front emitted at the excitation point,
and propagating along the beam can be clearly observed in the
measured area.
Fig 12 shows that the proposed method is quite able to
provide full-field contact less measurements of vibrations at
its time scale evolution.
5

(a)

(b)

Figure 11 : Phase change between two instants. (a) Modulo

2, (b) unwrapped phase map
The displacemet field observed in Fig. 11b is quite similar
to what can be expected according to the known theory of
beam vibrations. The measurement zone represents 11500
independents and synchronous points that are obtained in a
one shot measurement (i.e. without any scanning).
4.4

Transient excitation

In a second step, the mechanical set-up is excited by a pulse

signal with a bandwidth 100Hz-3000Hz. Recording is
performed by using MN=512128 pixels with a frame rate at
8kHz.
Fig. 12 shows a set of displacement maps according to the
time evolution. The time delay between each map is 125s.

CONCLUSION

This paper presents a feasibility study to design a new

metrological tool adapted to the recording of the spatial and
temporal pattern of the vibration of a structure. This
unconventionnal tool is based on optical digital holography
and a high-speed hologram recording. The main parameters
governing the performances of the set-up were inversigated
using a numerical simulation of the full acquisition process,
including physical behavior of the structure, optical
diffraction, electronic recording, and digital reconstuction of
holograms. The first instants of the vibration are the critical
point, since distorsion due to the finite value of the exposure
time might occur, thus requiring the development of
correction strategies. The experimental set-up was tested both
with an harmonic and a transient excitation and the
experimental results confirm the ability of the method to
provide full-field contact less measurements of vibrations at
its time scale evolution.
As perspectives, such experimental methodology will give
opportunities to solve vibroacoustic problems related to
friction-induced vibrations or structure deformation due to
impacts for example. This kind of optic measurement can also
be particularly interesting for the analysis of displacement
field due to non coherent excitations like aero or hydroacoustic sources. The next developments of the method should
then be certainly coupled with industrial applications where
the full field measurement is required.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the Institute IRT Jule Verne
for its financial support through its Chair program
VIBROLEG on vibroacoustics of lightweight structures.

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