Cameras for Fluid Mechanics & Combustion Diagnostics

Andor’s portfolio of intensified sCMOS, EMCCD and sCMOS cameras provide a wide range of high sensitivity, fast detection solutions for the fluid, flow and combustion diagnostics ‘home-builder’ Research community. These detectors benefit especially applications in the field of reactive and non-reactive flows, jets and flames, with analysis techniques including:

Planar Laser-Induced Fluorescence (PLIF)
Chemiluminescence
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV)
Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy (CARS)

Detection solutions adapted to your needs

Andor high sensitivity cameras and modular spectrographs offer a comprehensive range of opto-mechanical interfaces, triggering and acquisition setup options to seamlessly integrate into a wide range of imaging and spectroscopy setups.

iStar sCMOS

50 frames/sec (5.5 MP sensor) Up to 4 kHz fps with ROI
<2 ns time resolution
High dynamic range

Specifications

ZL41 Wave sCMOS

100 frames/sec (5.5 MP sensor)Up to 4 kHz fps with ROI
Dual image inter-frame <300 ns
33,000:1 dynamic range

Specifications

Kymera, Newton & iXon

High sensitivity
Multi-kHz spectral rates
High throughput and high spectral resolution

Specifications

Techniques and Applications

PLIF/Chemiluminescence

PLIF is used for the measurement of concentration/mole fraction of species such as Na, OH, NO, O₂, CH, CO or acetone, localised temperature, velocity, and pressure:

Discriminating OH and CO imaging for flames and combustors
NO imaging for NOx production in gas jets
Acetone imaging for fuel and air mixtures
Temperature imaging in flames and supersonic/hypersonic flows

Chemiluminescence is an other technique used for flame studies’. It is based on imaging chemically excited (as opposed to laser-excited like LIF/PLIF) species/radicals, e.g. OH*. Chemiluminescence is useful in situations where it is technically difficult or too costly to apply PLIF, e.g. optical engine diagnostics.

CH PLIF image taken on a Meso-scale distributed gas turbine combustor 2 mm above burner surface (horizontal cross section). Averaged data (200 frames) was acquired with iStar sCMOS. Courtesy of Dr. Tonghun Lee at Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Particle Image Velocimetry

2D-PIV provides characterization of flow fields and turbulence dynamics in fluids. It relies on the imaging of light scattered by seeding particles added to the fluid/flow under analysis.

It uses a combination dual-pulse lasers and accurately synchronised detectors capable of dual imaging with extremely short inter-frame (e.g. sCMOS or gated sCMOS) to determine the two velocity components of features of interest in a single plane simultaneously. Variations include:

Stereo-PIV - 2 cameras are used to record simultaneously off-axis view of the same region of interest, and determine out-of-plane motion of the seeded particles.
Tomographic PIV - visualization of flow structure in 3D with the help of typically 4 cameras positioned around the flow volume to analyse

While CMOS/sCMOS cameras are detector of choice for PIV, gated intensified cameras such as iStar sCMOS can be used to better image (‘freeze’) supersonic flows, further remove strong unwanted background noise and enhance weak signals.

$Flow field features of fractal impinging, 3D-PIV data taken with four Zyla sCMOS cameras, courtesy of Professor Astarita at Universit´a di Napoli Federico II.$ Further Reading on PIV

Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy

(Rotational) CARS is a non-linear spectroscopy technique used for combustion diagnostics including chemical species identification, species concentration measurement, but also to provide non-invasive map temperatures in combustion engines and flames.

Due to the weak nature of the CARS signal and need for multi-kHz acquisition rates, electron-multiplying EMCCDs are favoured for CARS thermometry

CARS thermometry performed on Hencken Burner flame with H2/Air equivalence ratio of O (298K) and 0.7 (2012K). Spectra averaged over 2000 shots and calibrated according to instrument response function (IRF). Acquired with Andor iXon EMCCD in crop mode to achieve 5 kHz spectral rates. Courtesy of Pr Lucht at School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University. Thomas et al, Technique developments and performance analysis of chirped-probe-pulse femtosecond coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering combustion thermometry, Applied Optics Vol. 56, No. 31, 2017, pp. 8797-8810

Customer Publications

Author	Title	Year
Z. Chang et al	Chirped Probe Pulse Femtosecond Cars H2 Measurements At Elevated Pressure And Temperature	2022
D. R. Richardson et al	Femtosecond Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy in a Cold-Flow Hypersonic Wind Tunnel for Simultaneous Pressure and Temperature Measurements	2022
N. S. Rodrigues et al	A Comparison of NO Laser-induced Fluorescence Models at conditions relevant to Supersonic and Hypersonic Flows	2022
S. Abe et al	Experimental investigation of natural convection and gas mixing behaviors driven by outer surface cooling with and without density stratification consisting of an air-helium gas mixture in a large-scale enclosed vessel	2022
M. L. Passarelli et al	Experimental Characterization of a Lean Prevaporized Premixed Combustor for Supersonic Transport Applications	2022
J. Saavedra et al	Flow conditioning system for tri-sonic high pressure aerothermal testing	2021
D. Baccarella et al	Isolator-combustor interactions in a circular model scramjet with thermal and non-thermal choking-induced unstart	2021
D. Fries et al	Turbulent mixing and trajectories of jets in a supersonic cross-flow with different injectants	2021
E. J. Nissen et al	Shock-induced kinetics and cellular structures of liquid nitromethane detonation	2021
A. Guemes et al	Experimental Assessment of RANS Models for Wind Load Estimation over Solar-Panel Arrays	2021
G. Xiong et al	Laser induced incandescence measurement of soot in ethylene buoyant turbulent diffusion flames under normal and reduced oxygen concentrations	2021
F. Bauer et al	Three-dimensional particle size determination in a laminar diffusion flame by tomographic laser-induced incandescence	2021
R. Castellanos et al	On the uncertainty of boundary-layer parameters from Ensemble PTV data	2021
J. J. Cerutti et al	Aerodynamic drag reduction by means of platooning configurations of light commercial vehicles: A flow field analysis	2021
G. Cafiero et al	Turbulence properties in jets with fractal grid turbulence	2021

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