Lasers provide the capability to non-intrusively probe environments that would be otherwise inaccessible to traditional sensors. I will describe the basics of laser absorption spectroscopy to measure physical properties of gas phase systems, and show two examples of my work with laser sensing in practical environments:
Measurements of temperature and water vapor concentration in a full-scale ground test scramjet combustor at the air force research laboratory and basic comparisons with CFD.
Measurements of time-resolved greenhouse gas concentrations over a 2 km open path in the atmosphere above Boulder.
My goal is to demonstrate what these techniques can and cannot do, in hopes of generating conversation between experimentalists and computationalists around measurement and analysis of fluids problems.