Intrusive effects of repetitive laser pulsing in high-speed tracer-LIF measurements

Abstract

The effects of repetitive laser pulsing on laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) signals from three popular organic flow tracers, acetone, 3-pentanone, and biacetyl are examined experimentally in the context of high-speed PLIF imaging. The effects of varying the incident laser fluence, laser repetition rates, tracer mole fractions, and carrier gas (air or N2) are investigated. Repetitive laser pulsing leads to changes in the measured LIF signal as a function of laser pulse number for all three tracers. For biacetyl/air mixtures, the LIF signal increases as a function of pulse number and the LIF signal increase per pulse is observed to be a function of the incident laser fluence. For biacetyl/air mixtures at room temperature, the increase in LIF signal during repetitive laser pulsing is attributed solely to absorptive heating of the probe volume, which is confirmed by Rayleigh scattering thermometry measurements. For acetone and 3-pentanone mixtures in the air, the LIF signal decreases with increasing pulse number and the LIF signal depletion per pulse is a linear function of incident laser fluence. This allows the signal depletion per pulse from acetone and 3-pentanone to be normalized by laser fluence and generalized to a single parameter of 0.002%/pulse/(mJ/cm2). There is no discernable effect of varying the tracer mole fraction or the laser repetition rate over the range of values investigated. The substitution of N2 for the air as a carrier gas leads to a significant decrease in the signal depletion per pulse. The potential mechanisms for the enhanced signal depletion in the presence of oxygen are discussed. A likely source is “photo-oxidation”, where the products of laser photolysis react with the surrounding O2 to form the highly reactive hydroxyl (OH) radical, which then oxidizes the tracer. Overall, the current results indicate that under repetitive laser pulsing conditions (i.e., high-speed imaging), the tracer-LIF measurement techniques can be considered intrusive unless the laser fluences are kept sufficiently low. The implications for turbulent flow measurements are discussed including recommendations for minimizing the intrusive repetitive pulsing effects.