Current Projects

Particle Image Velocimetry

One of the notable contributions of this laboratory is the development of Particle Image Velocimetry, which measures the synoptic velocity field in selected planes of a flow. The technique is routinely used to produce two-dimensional velocity maps of low speed subsonic and high speed supersonic flows sand is currently being extended to:

• provide the particle size distribution as well as the size/velocity correlation
• record and measure with cameras positioned at any angle with the scene
• measure the three-components of velocity in a volume
• measure power spectra and correlation fields
• measure over large areas at large distances

Each test facility at FMRL is equipped with extensive state-of-the-art optical diagnostics. Some of the primary hardware includes 4 Nd:Yag pulsed lasers, 5W and 15W Argon-Ion CW lasers and several low power He:Neon lasers. Digital Image Processing facilities include two IBM RISC 6000 stations and several microcomputers. As a by-product a technique has also been developed to measure instantaneous density fields using the correlation of electronically recorded laser speckles