Researchers at the City University are experimenting with a new method of testing for faults in buildings, bridges, aircraft and electronics.
Shearography is an optical technique which uses a naturally generated laser-speckle pattern to detect deformations in materials, inventor and visiting research professor Dr Michael Hung Yau-yan said.
An electronic shearing camera captures images of the tested object before and after applying strain.
A special computer program analyses the data and displays easy-to-interpret images of deformations.
'Shearography permits full-field observation of surface deformities in a test object and reveals flaws by identifying flaw-induced deformation anomalies,' Professor Hung said.
He is also professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and associate director of the Centre for Robotics and Advanced Automation at Oakland University, Michigan.
Shearography is said to be more than 1,000 times faster than point-by-point ultrasonic inspection. And it does not require the rigid laboratory-controlled environment of holography.