Handheld pocket-size Fourier transform profilometry using projector-enabled smartphone

ABSTRACT

Surface Fourier transform profilometry (FTP) is a technique used for reconstructing three-dimensional (3-D) surface topography using light. It has been widely used in machine vision for biomedical and biometric automations, providing solutions beyond conventional 2-D imaging. This paper proposes an implementation of the handheld pocket-size FTP for 3-D surface profile imaging using a projector-enabled Samsung Galaxy Beam smartphone. In the implementation, a crossed-optical-axes geometry of the FTP is formed by using a mirror positioned over the phone’s projector via an adjustable tilt mounting bracket. Experimental proof-of-concept of the proposed profilometry is done by implementing conventional and non-phase shifting FTPs with different diffuse test objects. The experimental results obtained by using the non-phase shifting technique are in good agreement with those of the direct contact measurement. Besides having superiority of compactness, the proposed profilometry paves the way for the development of real-time 3-D profiling and printing through internet or Bluetooth interconnection.     

Modeling of Flow in Three-Dimensional, Multizone, Anisotropic Porous Media with Weakly Singular Integral Equation Method

A symmetric Galerkin boundary element method is developed for modeling steady-state Darcy’s flow in three-dimensional porous media. The proposed technique is capable of treating a nonhomogeneous medium that consists of several regions possessing different permeabilities and may contain a surface of discontinuity such as impermeable seals. The key governing equations are established based on a pair of weakly singular weak-form integral equations for the fluid pressure and the fluid flux. The crucial feature of those integral equations are that they are completely regularized such that all involved kernels are only weakly singular and that they are applicable to a medium possessing generally anisotropic permeability. A final system of governing integral equations is obtained in a symmetric form and validity of all involved integrals only requires continuity of the pressure boundary data; as a consequence, continuous interpolations can be employed everywhere in the numerical approximation. To accurately capture the jump of the fluid pressure in the local region near the boundary of the discontinuity surface, special tip elements are employed. To further enhance accuracy and computational efficiency of the method, special integration quadrature is adopted to treat both weakly singular and nearly singular integrals and an interpolation strategy is utilized to evaluate the kernels for anisotropic permeability. As demonstrated by various numerical experiments, the current method yields highly accurate results with only weak dependence on mesh refinement.     

Analysis of fractures in 3D piezoelectric media by a weakly singular integral equation method

A weakly singular, symmetric Galerkin boundary element method (SGBEM) is established to compute stress and electric intensity factors for isolated cracks in three-dimensional, generally anisotropic, piezoelectric media. The method is based upon a weak-form integral equation, for the surface traction and the surface electric charge, which is established by means of a systematic regularization procedure; the integral equation is in a symmetric form and is completely regularized in the sense that its integrand contains only weakly singular kernels of (hence allowing continuous interpolations to be employed in the numerical approximation). The weakly singular kernels which appear in the weak-form integral equation are expressed explicitly, for general anisotropy, in terms of a line integral over a unit circle. In the numerical implementation, a special crack-tip element is adopted to discretize the region near the crack front while the remainder of the crack surface is discretized by standard continuous elements. The special crack-tip element allows the relative crack-face displacement and electric potential in the vicinity of the crack front to be captured to high accuracy (even with relatively large elements), and it has the important feature that the mixed-mode intensity factors can be directly and independently extracted from the crack front nodal data. To enhance the computational efficiency of the method, special integration quadratures are adopted to treat both singular and nearly singular integrals, and an interpolation strategy is developed to approximate the weakly singular kernels. As demonstrated by various numerical examples for both planar and non-planar fractures, the method gives rise to highly accurate intensity factors with only a weak dependence on mesh refinement.     

Hybrid fluorometric flow analyzer for ammonia

We describe a robust, highly sensitive instrument for the determination of ambient ammonia. The instrument uses two syringe pumps to handle three liquids. The flow configuration is a hybrid between traditional flow injection (FI) and sequential injection (SI) schemes. This hybrid flow analyzer spends approximately 87% of its time in the continuous flow FI mode, providing the traditional FI advantages of high baseline stability and sensitivity. The SI fluid handling operation in the remaining time makes for flexibility and robustness. Atmospheric ammonia is collected in deionized water by a porous membrane diffusion scrubber at 0.2 L/min with quantitative collection efficiency, derivatized on-line to 1-sulfonatoisoindole, and measured by fluorometry. In the typical range for ambient ammonia (0-20 ppbv), response is linear (r2 = 0.9990) with a S/N = 3 limit of detection of 135 pptv (15 nM for 500 microL of injected NH4+(aq)) with an inexpensive light emitting diode photodiode-based detector. Automated operation in continuously repeated, 8-min cycles over 9 days shows excellent overall precision (n = 1544 p(NH)3 = 5 ppbv, RSD = 3%). Precision for liquid-phase injections is even better (n = 1520, [NH4+(aq)] = 2.5 microM, RSD = 2%). The response decreases by 3.6% from 20 to 80% relative humidity.