Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Laser Doppler velocimetry
Summary
Laser Doppler velocimetry, also known as laser Doppler anemometry, is the technique of using the Doppler shift in a laser beam to measure the velocity in transparent or semi-transparent fluid flows or the linear or vibratory motion of opaque, reflecting surfaces. The measurement with laser Doppler anemometry is absolute and linear with velocity and requires no pre-calibration.
The development of the helium–neon laser (He-Ne) in 1962 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories provided the optics community with a continuous wave electromagnetic radiation source that was highly concentrated at a wavelength of 632.8 nanometers (nm) in the red portion of the visible spectrum. It was discovered that fluid flow measurements could be made using the Doppler effect on a He-Ne beam scattered by small polystyrene spheres in the fluid.
At the Research Laboratories of Brown Engineering Company (later Teledyne Brown Engineering), this phenomenon was used to develop the first laser Doppler flowmeter using heterodyne signal processing. This instrument became known as the laser Doppler velocimeter and the technique was called laser Doppler velocimetry. It is also referred to as laser Doppler anemometry.
Early laser Doppler velocimetry applications included measuring and mapping the exhaust from rocket engines with speeds up to 1000 m/s, as well as determining flow in a near-surface blood artery. Similar instruments were also developed for solid surface monitoring, with applications ranging from measuring product speeds in production lines of paper and steel mills to measuring vibration frequency and amplitude of surfaces.
In its simplest and most presently used form, laser Doppler velocimetry crosses two beams of collimated, monochromatic, and coherent laser light in the flow of the fluid being measured. The two beams are usually obtained by splitting a single beam, thus ensuring coherence between the two. Lasers with wavelengths in the visible spectrum (390–750 nm) are commonly used; these are typically He-Ne, Argon ion, or laser diode, allowing the beam path to be observed.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.