Method for estimating the impact of atmospheric turbulence on 3D angular deformations measurement

Abstract The optical method is one of the most accurate methods for the 3D angular deformations measurement. However, the measured results fluctuate around a mean value as a result of the impact of the atmospheric turbulence, and the relationship between the fluctuation and the atmospheric turbulence is unclear. In this paper, we propose an optical 3D angular deformations measurement method to analyze the optical wave propagation, and study the impact of the atmospheric turbulence. The fluctuations of the three deformation angles are calculated in different atmospheric turbulences. It is found that this optical method is not suitable for high accuracy measurement with the refractive-index structure parameter larger than 10 −14  m −2/3 . When the widths of the crosshairs fringes are different, the impacts of the atmospheric turbulence are nearly the same. It is also found that the impact of the atmospheric turbulence can be reduced by increasing the gray value of the image.