The demand for extensive gear shape measurements with single-digit µm uncertainty is growing. Tactile standard gear tests are precise but limited in speed. Recently, faster optical gear shape measurement systems have been examined. Optical gear shape measurements are challenging due to potential deviation sources such as the tilt angles between the surface normal and the sensor axis, the varying surface curvature, and the surface properties. Currently, the full potential of optical gear shape measurement systems is not known. Therefore, laser triangulation and confocal-chromatic gear shape measurements using a lateral scanning position measurement approach are studied. As a result of tooth flank standard measurements, random effects due to surface properties are identified to primarily dominate the achievable gear shape measurement uncertainty. The standard measurement uncertainty with the studied triangulation sensor amounts to >10 µm, which does not meet the requirements. The standard measurement uncertainty with the confocal-chromatic sensor is <6.5 µm. Furthermore, measurements on a spur gear show that multiple reflections do not influence the measurement uncertainty when measuring with the lateral scanning position measurement approach. Although commercial optical sensors are not designed for optical gear shape measurements, standard uncertainties of <10 µm are achievable for example with the applied confocal-chromatic sensor, which indicates the further potential for optical gear shape measurements.

The question, how certain surface layer properties (for example, hardness or roughness) can be specifically influenced in different manufacturing processes, is of great economic interest. A prerequisite for the investigation of the formation of surface layer properties is the metrological assessment of the material stresses during processing. Up to now, no commercial in-process measuring system exists, which is able to determine material stresses in the form of mechanical strains in high-dynamic manufacturing processes with sufficient accuracy. A detailed analysis of the resolution limits shows that speckle photography enables deformation measurements with a resolution in the single-digit nanometer range. Thus, speckle photography basically offers the potential to measure material stresses during processing. Using the example of single-tooth milling, the applicability of speckle photography for in-process stress measurements is demonstrated. Even in such highly dynamic manufacturing processes with cutting speeds up to 10 m/s, the absolute measurement uncertainty of the strain is less than 0.05%. This is more than one order of magnitude lower than the occurring maximal strain. Therefore, speckle photography is suitable for characterizing the dynamic stresses and the material deformations in manufacturing processes.

Optical measurements inside reacting flows are often disturbed by refractive index fields, e.g., due to the strong density gradients in flames. Although occurring measurement errors due to light refraction are a known problem for certain particle image velocimetry (PIV) applications, only a qualitative analysis of the resulting measurement uncertainty inside flame flows has been carried out to date. As an important step forward, a measurement approach is proposed, which enables a quantification of the resulting measurement uncertainties due to light refraction. As an example, the measurement approach is applied to a premixed propane flame. The uncertainty analysis is based on the determination of occurring particle position errors due to light refraction inside the flame. For three different measurement planes, the velocity field is measured with PIV and the particle position errors are experimentally measured and verified by ray-tracing simulation based on the measured refractive index field, which is determined by the background-oriented Schlieren method. In the examined flow, maximal position errors amount up to 14 μm and yield significant systematic velocity errors of up to 4% and random velocity errors of up to 6%. In contrast to the systematic velocity error, the random velocity error varies significantly for the analyzed measurement planes inside the flame flow. Graphic

Surface microtopography measurement (e.g., form, waviness, roughness) is a precondition to assess the surface quality of technical components with regard to their applications. Laser speckle-based roughness measurement is an optical scattered light measuring technique that provides field of view dimensions of some square millimeters and measuring frequencies in the kilohertz domain enabling in-process roughness characterization of even moving part surfaces. However, camera exposure times of microseconds or less and a high detector pixel density mean less light energy per pixel. This affects the minimal achievable measurement uncertainty, which has not been clarified yet for almost plain sample shapes. For this reason, the measurement uncertainty limit of the surface roughness parameter Sa due to fundamental, inevitable noise sources such as laser shot noise and detector noise is analytically estimated and compared to experimental data. The results show a mainly shot-noise-limited measurement uncertainty contribution of less than 0.033 nm. In addition, a significant influence of laser beam profile variations on the achievable roughness measurement uncertainty is identified for the current experimental setup, which is generally below 0.3 nm and can be improved in future setups. The already achieved low measurement uncertainty offers ideal preconditions for in-process roughness measurements on samples with a similar surface structure in industrial environments.