Advanced diagnostics for reacting flows

Progress is reported for the past year of an interdisciplinary program aimed at establishing advanced optical diagnostic techniques applicable to combustion and plasma flows. The primary effort is on digital flowfield imaging techniques, which offer significant potential for a wide range of spatially resolved 2-d and 3-d measurements. The imaging is accomplished by recording light scattered from a planar laser-illuminated region using a modern solid-state camera. The scattering process is generally laser-induced fluorescence, though Mie scattering is also used in connection with sizing particles. Activities reported herein include: (1) basic spectroscopy and fluorescence imaging of O2 and NO; (2) molecular velocity imaging; (3) imaging diagnostics for supersonic combustion; (4) imaging diagnostics for hypersonic flows; (5) plasma diagnostics; (6) laser photolysis shock tube for fundamental studies of reaction kinetics and spectroscopy; and (7) development of flow imaging hardware and software.