Abstract

There is an increasing need for nonintrusive flow diagnostic capabilities that can be used over a wide range of conditions and that do not rely on the availability of foreign seed materials. Molecular Rayleigh scattering is particularly attractive because of inherently strong signal levels, which allow for flow field imaging, and the availability of suitable lasers and detectors in tire visible region of the spectrum, permitting the use of ordinary glass windows. The traditional difficulties in implementing Rayleigh scattering are the extraction of quantitative data from the scattering spectral profile and interference from window and wall surface elastic scattering.

© 1993 Optical Society of America