new user- wind tunnel

[Ed Wesly]

Hey, Zaynah! It seems that the forum is still unclear as to what you want to do. So here are some questions that might help us understand your project better.

It is still unclear as to what you would like to visualize. Do you simply want to make a record of the shape of the smoke to understand the flow of the air? An array of conventional cameras might be easier and cheaper to use.

Are you using smoke to follow the path of the air currents, but would rather not use smoke for testing aerodynamics? Then there are laser techniques, one of which BobH had mentioned in a previous post. There are also devices called Laser Doppler Velocimeters that can also help you if you are interested in measuring flow in wind tunnels, and you would not have to flood the tunnel with smoke.

But if you prefer to use smoke, it is imperative to use a pulsed laser to stop its motion because of its motion and unstable nature. And if you would like to make extremely tiny measurements, like on the scale of wavelengths of light, double-pulsed holography would be the way to go, as holomaker mentions, although you might find yourself overwhelmed by all the information this technique might yield.

The pulsed lasers powerful enough to holograph your volume are big and bulky devices, larger than your wind tunnel. I do not know of anyone in your part of the globe with such a device. I could certainly do the job in my studio, but then the really big question is what kind of budget do you have to come to Chicago, USA, with your device? Or to ship me and the studio out to you?

There are other techniques besides holography that use lasers that would be much less expensive, the bigger issue being electronics to capture and analyze the data, unless you are only interested in seeing the aerodynamics with your eyes. I wish you good fortune on your project.

[Ed Wesly]

Another, non-holographic approach to visualizing flow is a photographic Schlieren set up. Laser or white light could be used.

[Colin Kaminski]

Might consider a Point Diffraction Interferometer. I build one of those in the Fluid Dynamics Lab at NASA Ames around 1990. It allowed visualization of air pressure around an airfoil, and photographs were made to record it.

I am not sure what this is. Can you explain it a little more?