In the light of some assumptions that are very close to the practical working conditions,a very complicated polishing process of optical element can be simplified as a linear and shift invariant system that is relatd only to the speed,pres- sure and time of processing.In polishing,the removed material can be represented and entreated by the convolution of the removal function of polishing head and the dwell function.The properties of removal function are presented.The assumptions and methods given by the author have been shown to be correct and applicable by experiments using a ring lap to polish the optical surfac.
A set-up based on a special shadow method, pinhole method, was made and some experiments were done. The results show that this novel method is simple, easy to operate,and suitable for testing large aspherical surfaces quantitatively.
