Fibre sizing using Fraunhofer diffraction

The light scattering pattern from absorbing cylinders is shown to be adequately described by Fraunhofer diffraction for cylinders with diameter greater than 8 μm for light of wavelength 632.8 nm. This permits the use of a simple inversion procedure based on a Fourier transform of the scattering pattern to obtain the size distribution of fibre widths. For fibres of diameter less than 8 μm the same inversion procedure may be used when an electron micrograph of the fibres becomes the scattering object. The maximum resolution of this inversion procedure is shown to be proportional to the largest angle scanned and its performance with experimental data is illustrated.