Development of a 3-D Defocusing Liquid Crystal Particle Thermometry and Velocimetry (3DDLCPTV) System

Abstract

One of the most intriguing and perplexing problems in fluid mechanics today, as it was 50 years ago, is that of turbulence. The behavior of a fluid in turbulent regions around an object consists of chaotic flow phenomena made of unsteady vortices on many scales that can critically affect the ability of that object to pass through the fluid. Indeed, turbulent convective heat and mass transfer is one of the frequently encountered problems at all levels of applied engineering. While countless research efforts are devoted to understanding turbulent phenomena, this chaotic motion which also consists of random fluctuations in temperature, velocity, pressure, and fluid properties as well as advanced mixing (among other things), has yet to be solved analytically. As a result, understanding this flow requires the use of numerical methods. While turbulent behavior can be resolved through Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of the Navier-Stokes Equations, this method is extremely computationally intensive and cannot be practically implemented with today's computing power in flows with Reynolds numbers above approximately 104 or 105. As a result, other methods must be used that can approximate turbulent behavior with flow modeling.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA468644

Entities

People

  • David R. Schmitt

Organizations

  • University of Washington

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Digital Images
  • Fluid Flow
  • Geometry
  • Image Processing
  • Light Sources
  • Liquid Crystals
  • Materials Engineering
  • Measurement
  • Optical Properties
  • Optics
  • Particles
  • Refractive Index
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Educational Psychology
  • Fluid Dynamics.