Photoelastic Analysis of Partially Occluded Objects With an Integral-Imaging Polariscope

Polariscopes are the basic instruments used for the analysis of the stress state of transparent materials. Polarized light passing through a 3D object carries the integrated effect of the stress field along the light path. Therefore, conventional polariscopes are not able to discern the stress state of objects involving multiple plates with mutual occlusions. In this paper we propose a novel experimental system for three-dimensional stress analysis based on the combination of a polariscope and Synthetic Aperture Integral Imaging technique. Experimental results show the system's ability to recover the information of the stress distribution of a set of plates located at different depths having mutual occlusions.