Optical Techniques for Unsteady Aerodynamics - From lab application to flight testing

Abstract

Driven by the increasingly rapid progress of laser, camera and computer technology, several optical techniques used for optical flow diagnostics developed rapidly and did not only offered more potential for lab applications, but were more and more frequently applied in large industrial wind tunnel facilities and during full-scale flight tests. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), Background Oriented Schlieren Techniques (BOS) and Differential Infrared Thermography (DIT) and there way up from small scale experiments to aircraft applications in flight will be discussed in more detail.