High Power Pulsed LED Driver for Vibration Measurements

Vibration measurements pose specific experimental challenges to be faced. In particular, optical methods can be used to obtain full-field vibration information. In this scenario, stereo-camera systems can be developed to obtain 3D displacement measurements. As vibration frequency increases, the common approach is to reduce camera exposure time to avoid blurred images, which can lead to under-exposed images and data loss, as well as issues with the synchronization of the stereo pair. Both of these problems can be solved by using high-intensity light pulses, which can produce high-quality images and guarantee camera synchronization since data is saved by both cameras only during the short-time light pulse. To this extent, high-power Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs) can be used, but even if the LED itself can have a fast response time, specific electronic drivers are needed to ensure the desired timing of the light pulse. In this paper, a circuit is specifically designed to achieve high-intensity short-time light pulses in the range of 1 µs. A prototype of the designed board was assembled and tested to check its capability to respect the specification. Three different measurement methods are proposed and validated to achieve short-time light pulse measurements: shunt voltage measurement, direct photodiode measurement with a low-cost sensor, and indirect pulse measurement through a low-frame-rate digital camera.