Quantitative Color Schlieren for an H2–O2 Exhaust Jet Developing in Air

Abstract

Throughout many decades, the Schlieren visualization method has been mainly used as means to visualize transparent flows in a qualitative manner. The images recorded provide data regarding the existence of the flow, or illustrate predicted flow geometries and details. The colored Schlieren method has been developed in the late 1890s and has always had the intent to provide quantitative data rather than qualitative pictures of the studied phenomena. This paper centers on applying a quantitative color Schlieren method to help determine the gasodynamic parameters of an H2–O2 exhaust jet, developing in air. A comparison between the parameters obtained through calibrating the color filter for the Schlieren method and the results from a CFD simulation is performed to assess the range of the CS (color Schlieren) measurement. This paper’s findings address the issues of calibrated color filter Schlieren encounter during its implementation and discusses possible errors appearing when the method is applied to a 3D flow. While the qualitative Schlieren images are still impressive to observe, the quantitative Schlieren presents challenges and a low measurement accuracy (75%) when applied to 3D flows and compared to 2D cases found in the literature (97–98%).