Simultaneous multiple-point velocity measurements using laser-induced iodine fluorescence.

A technique is demonstrated for measuring velocity at multiple locations in a plane of a gaseous flowfield using Doppler-shifted absorption with fluorescence detection from iodine molecules, excited by a sheet of tunable single-axial-mode argon-ion laser radiation at 514.5 nm. Measurements were made simultaneously at 10,000 points in an iodine-seeded supersonic flowfield with a 100 x 100 element photodiode array camera and were found to agree well with a numerical solution for the velocity field. The accuracy with which a component of velocity can be measured is limited, in the current approach, by the iodine linewidth to about +/-5 m/sec.