Recent progress towards a high-speed three-dimensional flow visualization technique

Advances in high-repetition rate laser and camera technology present a renewed opportunity to develop high-speed three-dimensional flow diagnostics based on the rapid scanning of a laser sheet through a flow field. Recent progress towards developing a high-speed 3-D flow visualization system is presented. The system is based on a MHz rate pulse burst laser, a galvanometric scanning mirror and an ultra-high-speed camera. Once development is complete, the system will be able to acquire a 3-D image in tens of microseconds, making it suitable for a broad range of high-speed flow fields. In this paper, a low-speed version of the system was used to image the 3-D structure of vortex rings emitted from a small smoke chamber. The rich nature of the 3-D images demonstrates the inherent potential of the technique. Future work includes incorporation of the pulse burst laser into the 3-D system.