Transverse flowmetry of carbon particles based on photoacoustic Doppler standard deviation using an auto-correlation method

In order to measure the flow velocity of carbon particle suspension perpendicular to the receiving axis of ultrasound transducer, the standard deviation of photoacoustic Doppler frequency spectrum is used to estimate the bandwidth broadening, and the spectrum standard deviation is calculated by an auto-correlation method. A 532 nm pulsed laser with the repetition rate of 20 Hz is used as a pumping source to generate photoacoustic signal. The photoacoustic signals are detected using a focused PZT ultrasound transducer with the central frequency of 10 MHz. The suspension of carbon particles is driven by a syringe pump. The complex photoacoustic signal is calculated by Hilbert transformation from time domain signal before auto-correlation. The standard deviation of the Doppler bandwidth broadening is calculated by averaging the auto-correlation results of several individual A scans. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated by measuring the spectrum standard deviation of the transversal carbon particle flow from 5.0 mm/s to 8.4 mm/s. The experimental results show that the auto-correlation result is approximately linearly distributed within the measuring range. © 2015, Tianjin University of Technology and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.