The Optical Laboratories in the Department of Mechanical Engineering include the Holographic Application Laboratory, the Optical Measurement and Quality Inspection Laboratory, the Optical Non-destructive Testing Laboratory, and the Photomechanics Laboratory. In the past 10 years, the optical laboratories led by Prof. Lianxiang Yang have secured numerous grants, contracts, and gifts with multi-millions amount with focuses on full field, non-contacting, and three dimensional characterizations of advanced materials used in automobile, biomedical and High-Tech industries.

The laboratories are equipped with many advanced optical measurement systems, such as 3D-Holographic interferometry, speckle interferometry, digital shearography, high speed stereo digital image correlation, multi camera (more than 2) high resolution digital image correlation, optical tomographic imaging, and high-resolution microscopy, among others. Prof. Yang’s research team has also developed various optical measurement systems for solving specific problems in the automotive, biomedical, and high-tech industries. Because of his significant contributions and specific achievements in optical metrology and nondestructive testing, Dr. Yang was awarded in 2016 Fellow of SAE - The International Society of Automotive Engineers and in 2008 Fellow of SPIE - The International Society of Optics and Phonics. At the moment, over 10 graduate students are pursuing their PhD and Master degrees in Dr. Yang's group.

The laboratories provide a suite of general purpose optical measurement and characterization instruments for teaching and research purposes. Many research projects have been carried out from national agencies and the automotive industry. The laboratories with the highly qualified research team and the unique advanced optical instruments can be used for:

• Fast and precise determination of deformation/strain in all nanometric, micrometric, and millimeter levels using different optical measurement systems, such as Digital Image correlation, Digital Speckle Pattern Interferometry, Digital Shearography, and so on;

• Characterization of properties for advanced and biomedical materials;

• Full field measurement of high temperature deformation and strain;

• Full field vibration measurement and model analysis using holographic vibrometry;

• Nondestructive testing of delaminations in composite materials using digital shearography;

• Reverse engineering and digitizing to generate 3D CAD models in modern manufacturing using photogrammetry.

Following images show some results from current and previous research projects.

• Digital Images Correlation (DIC) for measuring strains under different conditions

• 3D Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometry (3D-ESPI) for measuring Bone Strains

• 3D-ESPI for measuring strains of different engineering materials

• Digital Shearography for NDT/NDE

• Vibration and noise analysis

• Microstructure and MEMS measurement

• Image processing, data evaluation, and software development

Besides the areas of optical measurement and testing, Prof. Yang's research interests cover also design validation, optimization, and sensor/instrument design for special purposes etc.