Cylindrical holography has been utilized to capture 180 degree(s) field of view of high speed ballistic events. In this paper, we detail the methodology, design, and experimental results for a cylindrical hologram system that captures the fragment fields behind a penetrated armor plate. It is critical to use the wrap-around approach for proper test evaluation because of the possibility of large armor chunks blocking other fragments. An 18 ns pulse width, 3 Joule ruby laser is used as the illumination source for these 45.7 cm diameter holograms. For this application, the primary challenge has been the mitigation of the large flash caused by the projectile/target interaction. Several flash reduction techniques are discussed including narrow- band and neutral density filtering. Experimental results for this ongoing effort are presented.

Date Published: 12 April 1995
PDF: 15 pages
Proc. SPIE 2406, Practical Holography IX, (12 April 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.206210

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2406:
Practical Holography IX
Stephen A. Benton, Editor(s)