Development of Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Tomography for Determination of Spatially Resolved Distributions of Water Vapor Temperature and Concentration

Optical diagnostic techniques used in high speed, high enthalpy flows, such as in a supersonic ramjet (scramjet) combustor, allow direct measurement of temperature and species concentration. Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS) is a common laser based measurement technique for measuring temperature and species concentration in harsh environments such as chemically reacting flows. TDLAS is a one-dimensional, path integrated measurement that provides average values of the measured quantities and can be affected by gradients in the measurement space. By combining TDLAS with tomographic image reconstruction a two-dimensional spatially resolved distribution can be obtained. This technique is called Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Tomography.;TDLAT has been developed for the purpose of making temperature and species concentration measurements on the supersonic combustion facility at the Aerospace Research Laboratory. TDLAT has been developed for the purpose of making two-dimensional measurements of water vapor concentration, which when combined with Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry can be used to calculate supersonic combustion efficiency of a scramjet combustor. This measurement system has been used in measurements of a flat flame burner from which two-dimensional distributions of temperature and water vapor concentration have been calculated. The calculated temperatures were then compared to measurements made on the same flat flame burner. Reconstructions of temperature and concentration show the structure of the flat flame burner, resolving regions of ambient room air, nitrogen co-flow, mixing layer and hot burner core. The TDLAT system was then installed on the supersonic combustion facility, where measurements were made for a known mole fraction of steam injected into the free stream. The TDLAT system was then used to measure water vapor concentration and temperature for clean-air combustion for an equivalence ratio of 0.17. The resulting values were then used to calculate supersonic combustion efficiency of the scramjet combustor.