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Completed TRL 3 (started at 2, targeting 3)
High enthalpy, high speed flows are a unique and challenging environment for both modeling efforts and experimental measurement. These flows are of particular relevance to NASA missions, with applications to environments including reentry, rocket plume surface interactions and propellant burning. However, the high luminosity and temperature of these flows has resulted in significant limitations on the measurements that have been possible in these flows using intrusive measurement techniques. In addition, these flows often contain particulates that are changing the resulting chemistry of the flow and create difficulties in model validation efforts and for intrusive measurements. To help generate the data necessary for understanding these flows, this project aims to measure flow and particulate properties using laser and optical diagnostics. Laser and optical diagnostic techniques, including laser induced incandescence (LII), planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF), two-color pyrometry, and schlieren imaging, offer significant capabilities in being able to non-intrusively capture flow field properties with high spatial and temporal resolution. Laser and optical diagnostics also offer the advantage of enabling the measurement of particle characteristics within the flow, allowing for a more detailed understanding of these flow fields. For this study, significant emphasis will be placed on adapting the use of LII, PLIF, pyrometry, and schlieren techniques to these challenging environments focusing on flows relevant to NASA missions including reentry environments common in thermal protection system testing, the complex flow developed with the impingement of a rocket plume on a surface, and the effects of metal additives in rocket propellants. Each of these flows are relevant to different NASA mission areas, and the increase in diagnostic capability and scope will provide an invaluable increase in the technical capability of NASA experiments moving forward.
The data gathered through these measurements will then be useful for validation of computer models of the dust/plume interaction.
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