Applications of Schlieren System for Research

[lolcat]

Hey guys,

As you can see this is my first post on the forum. I came here hoping to find some ideas for doing research with Schlieren photography. I am currently a senior in university and want to do research in physics for my final semester here. I came across Schlieren photography while brainstorming on Google and began reading into it.

I found some DIY articles online on how to make it at home. Has anyone had any experience with it? How hard is it to make one? I'm willing to put work into as I am really interested in it.

My other question is that does anyone have any ideas about applications for this system once I have made it? I want to sell this idea to my professor who will be advising me in this research, but I want to have a good application for it once its created. I thought about fluid and air flow, aerodynamics, etc. but not sure about anything else.

Hopefully you can help me out! Thanks.

 

[lolcat]

Bump!

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[lolcat]

Last bump... lol any help? I have to submit everything in within the next week to get everything approved for next semester. Anything is appreciated!

 

[lolcat]

Alright no ideas huh lol... how about anything regarding ferrofluids? What kind of research can be done with them? Hope I have better luck with this one lol

 

[Nano-Passion]

Maybe it might help if you describe what Schlieren photography/system? I don't know, just a thought. I would love for you to get help but it is out of my knowledge.

 

[lolcat]

Thanks for your reponse! And wow never thought of that... I thought it was pretty common with physics majors (im a bio major btw). Sorry about that. It's basically a method of being able to capture the movement of fluids (mostly gases). Here's some cool vids that can explain it a lot better than I can:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSFwH0BVd3Q&list=FLRdzTw7w4NLBWSGfrwg4rcw&index=92&feature=plpp_video



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HDG6zNfbfw&list=FLRdzTw7w4NLBWSGfrwg4rcw&index=8&feature=plpp_video

 

[HossamCFD]

I didn't work with Schlieren photography but I had some colleagues who did. This technique has been used historically for over a hundred years now for visualising standing shock waves in supersonic flows (I believe Ernst Mach was the first to do that). Now that's old news and what you might want to do if you have access to a high speed camera is to study high speed shock waves like those who happen in detonation. one area that is not fully understood is DDT (Deflagration to Detonation Transition) and you might find this an interesting application for Schlieren photography. There is also what is called the Rainbow Schlieren which is more difficult to setup but has the advantage of providing quantitative results (e.g temperature profiles) as opposed to the qualitative results provided by normal Schlieren systems.

Anyway, these are just some keywords and thoughts that might help you in searching the literature of Schlieren photography. As I said, I didn't work with such systems so might find my post somehow inaccurate.

Cheers