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At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1998

Particle Imaging Velocimetry Used in a Transonic Compressor Facility

Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) is an optical technique whereby a pulsed laser sheet is used to illuminate particles entrained in a fluid across an extended planar cross section of a flow field. Electronic recording of the particle positions at two closely timed laser pulses permits the computation of the flow velocity. PIV captures the instantaneous flow field, permitting the study of unsteady flow phenomena. Mean flow statistics can be computed by acquiring several hundred images and averaging the results. The first-ever successful application of PIV to acquire measurements in a high-speed rotating turbomachinery blade row was completed in NASA Lewis Research Center's W-8 Single Stage Axial Compressor Facility. Measurements were acquired in a 20-in.-diameter transonic compressor rotor operating at 17,188 rpm. A custom-designed light-sheet generating probe was used to insert the high-energy, pulsed light-sheet illumination required for recording the unblurred images of particles entrained in the fluid. Measurements of the shock wave formed within the rotor blade passage and of unsteady structures within the blade wakes were acquired. These measurements provide insight into unsteady spatial structures in the flow field which cannot be measured with the more conventional laser anemometry technique. The PIV technique provides both instantaneous and average velocity data in a transonic compressor in an order of magnitude less time than required for other conventional optical diagnostic techniques.

Wernet, Mark P.↗
NASA NTRS1992

High-resolution OH LIF velocity measurement technique for high-speed reacting flows

A nonintrusive optical technique was developed for the quantitative study of velocity fields in steady, high-speed, reacting flows. A narrow-linewidth laser source was tuned through an isolated OH absorption line to measure the Doppler-shifted linecenter frequency relative to an iodine reference line. A counterpropagating beam approach was used to eliminate collisional impact shift effects. Pointwise measurements of velocity were made in a unique reacting underexpanded jet facility as an extensive calibration of the technique over a wide range of flow conditions. The extension of the technique to planar measurements is also discussed.

Klavuhn, K. G.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Optical Detection of Lightning from Space

Two primary detection techniques (optical and RF) have a proven capability for detecting lightning from low earth orbit. However, the lightning processes that generate the optical and RF signals are vastly different providing significantly different information content from each sensor type. Because of the intervening ionosphere, low frequency RF components do not reach satellite altitudes. As a consequence, many of the processes associated with the major energy release of a lightning event (i.e. return strokes, k-changes, recoil streamers, etc), in all likelihood contribute little to the RF signal arriving at the satellite. The optical output from lighting, on the other hand, has been shown to be highly correlated with the energetic, charge-transferring processes mentioned above. On the down side, the optical energy, while essentially unaffected by the atmosphere once it emerges from the cloud, is heavily scattered within the cloud. While there is little absorption by the cloud, the great optical depth makes the total light energy emerging from the cloud to be dependent on where in the cloud the lightning occurred. Analyses suggest that when lightning is confined to the lowest regions of the cloud, the light is strongly attenuated and detection becomes problematic. Fortunately, the vast majority of lightning flashes are comprised of channels that propagate through the middle of the cloud and higher. These flashes produce bright signals at the top of a cloud and are readily detectable. Presently, we have two optical instruments in orbit. The Optical Transient Detector (OTD) has been orbiting the earth since April, 1995, while the Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) was launched on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) in November of 1997. Both instruments are relatively small, solid state optical imagers, designed specifically to detect and locate lightning activity from low earth orbit with high detection efficiency and location accuracy.

Christian, H. J.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Diffusivity Measurements Made Instant and Easy

A compact common path interferometer (CPI) system has been developed to measure the diffusivity of liquid pairs. The CPI is an optical technique that can be used to measure changes in the gradient of the refraction index of transparent materials. It uses a shearing interferometer that shares the same optical path from a laser light source to the final imaging plane. The molecular diffusion coefficient of liquids can be determined from the physical relations between changes in the optical path length and liquid phase properties. When the data obtained by using the CPI have been compared with similar results from other techniques, the instrument has been demonstrated to be far superior to other instruments for measuring the diffusivity of miscible liquids while staying very compact and robust (ref. 1). Because of its compactness and ease of use, the CPI has been adopted for use in studies of interface dynamics as well as other diffusion-controlled process applications (ref. 2). This progress will permit experiments in microgravity that can quantitatively answer basic science questions about mass and thermal diffusion and their effect in transport processes. This instrument is a spinoff of a diagnostic development for microgravity fluid physics experiments at the NASA Glenn Research Center that has used optics and electronics existing in the fluid physics laboratory for feasibility studies. Optical diagnostic techniques have become an integral part of many areas of measurement applications in industrial and research laboratories. Many types of interferometers and their phase-shifted versions have been used as instruments for measuring optical wave fronts for lens testing and combustion and fluid flow diagnostics. One of these, the point diffraction interferometer, is considered to be robust (see, for example, ref. 3) because it has a common-path design. The point diffraction interferometer is difficult to align and has a limited measurement range for liquid-phase applications. Interferometry and schlieren techniques have been widely used for many years for gas-flow-visualization. On the other hand, the CPI, which is basically a Wollaston prism Polarizer in combination with an analyser (crystalline quartz retardation plate) is used instead of a point diffraction interferometer unit. The advantage of using the CPI over other optical techniques is that it can make quantitative measurements in liquids with the large index of refraction variations that often occur in interface dynamics studies. This can be simply accomplished by using different prism polarizers for each particular experimental condition.

Rashidnia, Nasser↗
NASA NTRS1993

Low earth simulation and materials characterization

Oxygen plasma ashers and an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) sources are currently being used for low Earth orbit (LEO) simulation. The suitability of each of these simulation techniques is considered. Thin film coatings are characterized by optical techniques, including variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry, optical spectrophotometry, and laser light scatterometry. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been used to characterize the surface morphology of thin aluminum films as a function of substrate temperature during deposition. Results on diamondlike carbon (DLC) films show that DLC degrades with simulated atomic oxygen (AO) exposure at a rate comparable to Kapton polyimide. Since DLC is not as susceptible as Kapton to environmental factors such as moisture absorption, it could potentially provide more accurate measurements of AO fluence on short space flights.

Synowicki, R. A.↗
NASA NTRS1986

A mobile system for active otpical pollution monitoring

The remote monitoring of atmospheric pollutants can now be performed in several ways. Laser radar techniques have proven their ability to reveal the spatial distribution of different species or particles. Classical optical techniques can also be used, but yield the average concentration over a given path and hence no range resolution. One such technique is Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy, DOAS. Such schemes can be used to monitor paths that a preliminary lidar investigation has shown to be of interest. Having previously had access to a mobile lidar system, a new system has been completed. The construction builds on experience from using the other system and it is meant to be more of a mobile optical laboratory than just a lidar system. A complete system description is given along with some preliminary usage. Future uses are contemplated.

Sunesson, A.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Optimal Transport Based Control of Granular Imaging System in Space

"Orbiting Rainbows” is a paradigm for creating a space-based observatory (telescope) from confined and aligned granular media. The overall objective is to construct a very large and lightweight aperture in space using a cloud of micron-sized particles held in position and aligned by the application of external electromagnetic fields, thus alleviating the extreme expense of deploying and stabilizing large monolithic telescopes by reducing the mass of the primary aperture. Adaptive optics techniques for wavefront stabilization and computational imaging techniques are then used to remove the optical noise from the scattering reflections of the granular medium, and finally producing clean images within the diffraction limit. In this paper, we address one of the key challenges of this new paradigm, namely controlling the position and orientation of the granules or particles so that the cloud of particles achieves the desired shape of an ultra-lightweight telescope and points into the right orientation. A further complication arises due to the fact that the particles do not have any onboard actuators. A number of external electric-field-based actuators are used to control all the particles simultaneously. Moreover, the number of actuators are orders-of-magnitude smaller than the number of particles, making this system largely under-actuated. Since the cloud of particles in any plausible configuration can be modeled as a probability distribution over the workspace, we formulate this control challenge as an optimal transport problem and then show that our optimal transport based control law drives the cloud of particles from any initial distribution to the desired position distribution (optical surface) and angular distribution (polarization state). Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Bandyopadhyay, Saptarshi↗
NASA NTRS1983

Laser-induced fluorescence technique for velocity field measurements in subsonic gas flows

A nonintrusive optical technique is reported for multiple-point velocity measurements in subsonic flows. The technique is based on the detection of fluorescence from a Doppler-shifted absorption line of seeded iodine molecules excited at a laser frequency fixed in the wing of the line. Counterpropagating laser sheets are used to illuminate the flow, in the present case a nitrogen round jet, thereby eliminating the need for an unshifted reference signal. The fluorescence is detected simultaneously at 10,000 points in a plane of the flow using a 100 x 100 element photodiode-array camera. The velocity at each point is computed from four successive camera frames, each recorded with a different beam direction. The measured mean velocities between 5 and 50 m/sec agree well with data from the literature.

Hiller, B.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Development of nonintrusive, scatter-independent techniques for measurement of liquid density inside dense sprays

A nonintrusive optical technique for measuring the liquid density in sprays used to simulate LOX injector flows is under development. This manuscript is a report on work toward that development which is currently in progress. The technique is a scatter-independent, absorption-based approach which depends on the numerical inversion of a collection of absorption profiles. For the case in which visible radiation passes through liquid-gas interfaces so numerous in sprays, substantial reductions and alterations in the signal result from scattering even in the absence of absorption. To avoid these problems, X-Rays will be used as the absorbed radiation. The experimental process is simulated by integrating the absorption spectrum for a known distribution, adding instrument noise to this 'measurement', creating a projection from the 'measurement', filtering the projection, inverting the projection, and comparing the results with the original prescribed distribution.

Hartfield, Roy↗
NASA NTRS1979

Detection of hairline cracks in textured silicon solar cells

Using a focused laser scanner, the optical technique described in the present paper can be used to detect hairline cracks of the type occurring in solar cells subjected to surface texturing. The technique is capable of detecting cracks of the order of a few microns, which, otherwise, can be observed only under high magnification using an optical microscope. The technique consists of scanning a solar cell with a finely focused laser beam and recording the photoresponse (short circuit current or open circuit voltage) as a function of beam position. The presence of a crack is manifested by a sharp dip in the photoresponse.

Sopori, B. L.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Apparatus for precision focussing and positioning of a beam waist on a target

The invention relates to optical focussing apparatus and, more particularly, to optical apparatus for focussing a highly collimated Gaussian beam which provides independent and fine control over the focus waist diameter, the focus position both along the beam axis and transverse to the beam, and the focus angle. A beam focussing and positioning apparatus provides focussing and positioning for the waist of a waisted beam at a desired location on a target such as an optical fiber. The apparatus includes a first lens, having a focal plane f sub 1, disposed in the path of an incoming beam and a second lens, having a focal plane f sub 2 and being spaced downstream from the first lens by a distance at least equal to f sub 1 + 10 f sub 2, which cooperates with the first lens to focus the waist of the beam on the target. A rotatable optical device, disposed upstream of the first lens, adjusts the angular orientation of the beam waist. The transverse position of the first lens relative to the axis of the beam is varied to control the transverse position of the beam waist relative to the target (a fiber optic as shown) while the relative axial positions of the lenses are varied to control the diameter of the beam waist and to control the axial position of the beam waist. Mechanical controllers C sub 1, C sub 2, C sub 3, C sub 4, and C sub 5 control the elements of the optical system. How seven adjustments can be made to correctly couple a laser beam into an optical fiber is illustrated. Prior art systems employing optical techniques to couple a laser beam into an optical fiber or other target simply do not provide the seven necessary adjustments. The closest known prior art, a Newport coupler, provides only two of the seven required adjustments.

Lynch, Dana H.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Local measurement of temperatures and concentrations: A review for hypersonic flows

The quality of reentry simulation for Shuttle, HERMES, Sanger, and NASP systematically suffers from the strong non-equilibrium of rotational and vibrational temperature due to the rapid acceleration of the test gas in the nozzle. Therefore the determination of temperatures is necessary and, if possible, preferable by a non-intrusive technique. The specific interests of this review are optical techniques such as electron beam fluorescence, laser-induced fluorescence, and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering. The capabilities available for local measurements with temporal resolution and quantitative accuracy are discussed for velocity, temperature, density, species concentrations, and fluctuations due to turbulence. The applicability of these methods of measurement is presented and discussed for the coming topic in aerothermodynamics: experimental techniques of hot gases in high enthalpy flows.

Dankert, C.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Use of Variable Angle Spectroscopic Ellipsometry in Order to Determine Contaminant Optical Properties

In order to measure contaminant levels found in the manufacture of the Redesigned Solid Rocket Motor (RSRM), optical properties of the contaminants are needed to develop standards for calibration purposes. Specific to our efforts is the determination of the complex index of refraction for a hydrocarbon mixture and a commercial methyl siloxane. Using ellipsometric measurements with multiple angles of incident and a range of wavelengths in the near infrared a determination of the index of refraction and the extinction coefficient were made for the contaminants. This paper will present the optical techniques and modeling approach used to determine these optical constants of the hydrocarbon mixture and the methyl siloxane studied.

Hughes, C.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Real-time optical image processing techniques

Nonlinear real-time optical processing on spatial pulse frequency modulation has been pursued through the analysis, design, and fabrication of pulse frequency modulated halftone screens and the modification of micro-channel spatial light modulators (MSLMs). Micro-channel spatial light modulators are modified via the Fabry-Perot method to achieve the high gamma operation required for non-linear operation. Real-time nonlinear processing was performed using the halftone screen and MSLM. The experiments showed the effectiveness of the thresholding and also showed the needs of higher SBP for image processing. The Hughes LCLV has been characterized and found to yield high gamma (about 1.7) when operated in low frequency and low bias mode. Cascading of two LCLVs should also provide enough gamma for nonlinear processing. In this case, the SBP of the LCLV is sufficient but the uniformity of the LCLV needs improvement. These include image correlation, computer generation of holograms, pseudo-color image encoding for image enhancement, and associative-retrieval in neural processing. The discovery of the only known optical method for dynamic range compression of an input image in real-time by using GaAs photorefractive crystals is reported. Finally, a new architecture for non-linear multiple sensory, neural processing has been suggested.

Liu, Hua-Kuang↗
NASA NTRS1986

Feasibility of mapping solution properties during the growth of protein crystals

This paper summarizes the feasibility of using optical techniques for mapping the convection, temperature, and solute concentration in the solution around a growing protein crystal. Convection can be mapped by a variety of techniques which measure either refractive index differences, displacements, velocity, or solute optical absorption. For protein crystal growth, however, ordinary schlieren and interferometric techniques are marginally sensitive and most displacement marking techniques unsuitable; therefore, phase-concentration by the absorption-interferometric technique appears to be quite feasible for protein solutions because of their low dn/dC. Finally, the monitoring of protein crystal growth rates appears to be feasible by double-exposure holography or birefringence.

Shlichta, P. J.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Fiber optic sensors for corrosion detection

The development of fiber optic sensors for the detection of a variety of material parameters has grown tremendously over the past several years. Additionally, the potential for analytical applications of fiber optic sensors have become more widely used. New pH sensors have also been developed using fiber optic techniques to detect fluorescence characteristics from immobilized fluorogenic reagent chemicals. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate the feasibility of using fiber optic sensors to detect the presence of Al(sup 3+) ions made in the process of environmental corrosion of aluminum materials. The Al(sup 3+) ions plus a variety of other type of metal ions can be detected using analytical techniques along with fiber optic sensors.

Smith, Alphonso C.↗