Metrology for Ogive Infrared Dome

The economical fabrication of ogive missile domes is a key driver for the development of future missile systems. An essential, and unsolved, part of the fabrication process is the fast and accurate measurement of the transmitted-wavefront error of the ogive dome over its full aperture. In the proposal we describe the development of a prototype interferometer for solving this measurement problem. The interferometer that is proposed is insensitive to alignment yet provides measurements of the entire aperture in double-pass while stitching in only one direction. It is configured in a manner that is relatively insensitive to alignment of the dome to the instrument. The measurement data provided by this instrument is essential to providing feedback to a deterministic final figuring process such as magnetorheological based technology. The effort is divided into two major phases: an algorithm testbed and a prototype instrument. The testbed will be based mostly on catalog components to allow for rapid implementation so that software can be developed and tested quickly. After the testbed, a prototype system will be built that will allow for the full aperture measurement of tangent ogive domes.