Property and Velocity Measurements in a Supersonic/Hypersonic Flow
Abstract : This work presents a non-intrusive laser-based diagnostics technique to measure instantaneous thermodynamic properties and velocity in a compressible fluid flow. The fluid is irradiated with a pulsed narrow-bandwidth Nd:YAG laser at 532 nm. Light scattering from a point in the flow field is collected over a solid angle of about + or - 20 degrees and focused into a narrow line on an intensified CCD camera using an anamorphic optical system. A molecular iodine filter absorbs the radiation at different degrees with angles, thus producing different intensity levels on each pixel along the line. A portion of the light is split and focused on the same CCD chip unfiltered, thus providing an intensity reference from which the fluid density is found. The scattering spectrum and Doppler frequency shift are dependent on the observation angle and fluid properties, and so the values of pressure, temperature and streamwise velocity at every laser pulse using a well-known scattering model.
Rayleigh scattering technique for simultaneous measurements of velocity and thermodynamic properties
A molecular-filter-based flow diagnostic technique termed filtered angularly resolved Raleigh scattering is used to measure velocity, density, and temperature simultaneously. The technique uses an anamorphic optical system to record the Rayleigh scattered signal viewed at different angles and focused onto an intensified charge-coupled device camera. The experimentally obtained intensity vs viewing angle profiles are then combined with a well-known computational model to solve for the velocity, density, and temperature. The technique was used in a supersonic axisymmetric jet operated at a variety of flow conditions from Mach 1 to 2.3.
Air-mass flux measurement system using Doppler-shifted filtered Rayleigh scattering
An optical system has been investigated to measure mass flux distributions in the inlet of a high speed air-breathing propulsion system. Rayleigh scattered light from air is proportional to the number density of molecules and hence can be used to ascertain the gas density in a calibrated system. Velocity field measurements are achieved by spectrally filtering the elastically-scattered Doppler-shifted light with an absorbing molecular filter. A novel anamorphic optical collection system is used which allows optical rays from different scattering angles, that have different Doppler shifts, to be recorded separately. This is shown to obviate the need to tune the laser through the absorption to determine velocities, while retaining the ability to make spatially-resolved measurements along a line. By properly selecting the laser tuning and filter parameters, simultaneous density measurements can be made. These properties are discussed in the paper and experiments demonstrating the velocimetry capability are described.