Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

A state-of-the-art, high-speed laser system capable of 100kHz repetition rate and high pulse energies is requested in support of a minimum of four current PhD theses pertaining to Lagrangian flow measurements at high Reynolds numbers. With the availability of a new Lagrangian particle tracking technique known as 'Shake-The-Box', dense and long pathlines can be reconstructed in a number of unsteady and complex flows. Currently novel post-processing strategies in conjunction with this Lagrangian data are being developed in my lab so that for instance time-varying pressure fields are reconstructed, entrainment is estimated, and even interactions within dense suspensions are characterized properly. With these measurements we will, for the first time, be able to understand cause-and-effect relationships between body motion/shape and wake development. These insights would in turn change our perspective of many complex flows and in turn provide means to either control or further optimize. Therefore, considering the rapid changes in Lagrangian data reconstruction occurring now, an opportunity for significant and lasting impact will be made possible with the state-of-the-art laser-system requested here.