Electro-Aerodynamic Laser-Beam-Parameter Measurements
Abstract
A diagnostic system to measure the beam power and quality of the Air Force Aero Propulsion Laboratory 15-kW CO2 electro-aerodynamic laser has been designed, fabricated, and tested. An anti-reflection-coated ZnSe beam splitter was employed to split off a small fraction (0.5%) of the main laser beam for diagnostic purposes. The low-power beam was split again to provide two beams for power and energy-distribution measurements, concurrent with sample irradiation by the main beam. An electrically calibrated disc calorimeter was used to measure beam power. The temporal and spatial energy distributions were measured by means of a mechanically scanned, one-dimensional pyrolytic array. This provided a 16 x 16-element two-dimensional map of the beam profile at a rate of up to 10 Hz. High-speed data acquisition was accomplished by transmitting the digital data to a PDP-8A minicomputer system (located in a central control room) configured for tape-cassette mass storage and hard-copy plotting. Initial experimental spatial/temporal beam-energy distributions obtained with this system have demonstrated the efficacy of this beam-profiling technique. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1976
- Accession Number
- ADA043303
Entities
People
- B. Sarka Jr
- D. F. Grosjean
- Robert A. Olson