Particle behavior in combustion processes is an active research area at NPS. Currently, four research efforts are being conducted: (1) There is a long standing need to better understand the soot production and combustion processes in gas turbine combustors, both from a concern for improved engine life and to minimize exhaust particulates. Soot emissions are strongly effected by fuel composition and additives; (2) A more recent need for particle sizing/behavior measurements is in the combustor of a solid fuel ramjet which uses a metallized fuel. High speed motion pictures are being used to study rather large burning particles; (3) In solid propellant rocket motors, metals are used to improve specific impulse and/or to provide damping for combustion pressure oscillations. Particle sizing experiments are being conducted using diode arrays to measure the light intensity as a function of scattering angle; (4) Once a good quality hologram is attained, a need exists for obtaining the particle distributions from hologram in a short period of time. A Quantimet 720 Image Analyzer is being used to reconstruct images
