NSF Award
9461637
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I Project will develop a powerful optical diagnostic for high temperature gases that is fundamentally different from any technique currently in use. This diagnostic provides spatially localized information, like laser-induced fluorescence, but does not require a laser. It utilizes the optical emission from the hot luminous gases. As explained in this proposal, the emitted light can be optically detected and subsequently manipulated and separated into two components whose intensity difference is due only to optical emission from a spatially localized region within the luminous volume. More precisely, this intensity difference is due to one spatial Fourier component of the light source distribution in the selected, localized region. Because of prior university and SBIR development of low-frequency devices, a high-frequency shearing interferometer emission velocimeter (SIEVE) can be designed, fabricated, and demonstrated under SBIR funding. In Phase I, three different ways to extend the technique to high frequencies will be analyzed, conceptual designs for instruments will be developed, and the light intensity requirements for each method will be calculated. A complete instrument will be built, demonstrated, and characterized during Phase II.
