Flow visualization using liquid crystals

Shirley Ashforth-Frost; K. Jambunathan

doi:10.1117/12.163707

Translator Disclaimer

2 December 1993 Flow visualization using liquid crystals

Shirley Ashforth-Frost, K. Jambunathan

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 2005, Optical Diagnostics in Fluid and Thermal Flow; (1993) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.163707
Event: SPIE's 1993 International Symposium on Optics, Imaging, and Instrumentation, 1993, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

The application of liquid crystal thermography to the measurement of temperature/heat transfer in engineering is well established. Having gained practical experience in the use of liquid crystals for surface temperature and heat transfer determination, and the successful development and implementation of a digital image processing system for automatic analysis, their application has been extended to the simultaneous measurement of flow velocity and temperature by using a combined Liquid Crystal Thermography/Particle Image Velocimetry technique. Natural convection from a horizontal cylinder in an enclosure was chosen as the simple geometry to facilitate preliminary investigations. Water has been artificially seeded with micro-encapsulated liquid crystals and the natural convection flow field recorded on video to facilitate later analysis. By acquiring consecutive frames from the video the velocity magnitude throughout the flow field has been determined. The temperature field has been obtained from the same frames but using a manual technique.

Citation Download Citation

Shirley Ashforth-Frost and K. Jambunathan "Flow visualization using liquid crystals", Proc. SPIE 2005, Optical Diagnostics in Fluid and Thermal Flow, (2 December 1993); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.163707

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE