Novel Optical Technique Developed and Tested for Measuring Two-Point Velocity Correlations in Turbulent Flows

Abstract

A novel technique for characterizing turbulent flows was developed and tested at the NASA Glenn Research Center. The work is being done in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, through a grant from the NASA Microgravity Fluid Physics Program. The technique we are using, Homodyne Correlation Spectroscopy (HCS), is a laser-light-scattering technique that measures the Doppler frequency shift of light scattered from microscopic particles in the fluid flow. Whereas Laser Doppler Velocimetry gives a local (single-point) measurement of the fluid velocity, the HCS technique measures correlations between fluid velocities at two separate points in the flow at the same instant of time. Velocity correlations in the flow field are of fundamental interest to turbulence researchers and are of practical importance in many engineering applications, such as aeronautics