Influence of altitude on aero-optic imaging deviation

Aero-optic imaging deviation is a kind of aero-optic effect. It characterizes the image position displacement on an imaging plane. This paper studies the influence of altitude on aero-optic imaging deviation. The Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solver provided in FLUENT was used for flow computations. The Runge-Kutta method based ray tracing was adopted for optics calculations. The orthogonal array was brought in for the experiment arrangement. Four representative suites of imaging deviations and imaging deviation slopes were obtained in the altitude range of 10-60 km. The results show that as altitude increases, the imaging deviation decreases, and the imaging deviation slope approaches zero from a negative value. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America