SIMULTANEOUS MEASUREMENT OF THE SHAPE AND THICKNESS OF A DRAGONFLY WING

A new method has been developed to measure the thickness and shape of a dragonfly wing simultaneously. The innovation in the method, which w e call the TSM (thickness and shape measurement) method, is the combin ation of a heterodyne interferometer and a laser triangulation displac ement sensor into one optical system. We confirmed the accuracy of the method by measuring the displacement of a glass plate and the thickne ss variation generated by a tilted glass plate. The method was then ap plied to a tilted glass plate and a dragonfly wing. The TSM system has a relative accuracy of 1% in the shape measurement and 1.8% in the th ickness variation measurement. The results indicated that the method i s very effective in biomechanics studies, such as evaluating the fligh t performance of dragonflies. In such evaluations, it is essential to measure with high accuracy the variations in both shape and thickness of the wing simultaneously.