Development of an Experimental System to Generate and Characterize Supersonic Aerosol Particles Using Laser Doppler Velocimetry

Abstract

There is current concern regarding high-speed flight vehicle encounters with aerosols and the surface damage resulting from particle impacts during flight. To investigate and characterize the damage potential of aerosol particles at flight speeds, a bench-top system was developed. This system is characterized in this thesis in its ability to generate monodisperse chemically-controlled particles using a vibrating orifice aerosol generator and accelerate the particles using a converging-diverging nozzle with both air and helium. The particle velocity is measured using a laser doppler velocimeter at various positions between the exit of the nozzle and the surface of a metal substrate and found to have a maximum mean velocity of 700 m/s in helium and 350 m/s in air. The results of this thesis are used to characterize the kinetic energy of particles prior to impact with a substrate for resultant damage studies and comparison to modeling in future work.