Review of RGB photoelasticity

Automatic methods of photoelasticity have had a significant progress with the development ofautomatic acquisition and image processing methods. This article concerns RGB photoelasticity, whichallows the determination of the photoelastic retardation using, usually, a single acquisition of theisochromatic fringes in white light by a colour camera. In particular, the article presents an overview ofthe main characteristics of RGB photoelasticity that is influence of the quarter-wave plate error, numberof acquisitions, type of light source, determination of low and high fringe orders, methods for searchingthe retardation, scanning procedures, calibration on a material different from that under test, combineduse of the RGB and phase shifting methods. A short section on the applications of RGB photoelasticitycompletes the article.