This paper describes a novel laser diagnostic and its demonstration in a practical aero-propulsion engine (General Electric J85). The diagnostic technique, named hyperspectral tomography (HT), enables simultaneous 2-dimensional (2D) imaging of temperature and water-vapor concentration at 225 spatial grid points with a temporal response up to 50 kHz. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such sensing capabilities have been reported. This paper introduces the principles of the HT techniques, reports its operation and application in a J85 engine, and discusses its perspective for the study of high-speed reactive flows.

A novel technique has been developed to obtain simultaneous tomographic images of temperature and species concentration based on hyperspectral absorption spectroscopy. The hyperspectral information enables several key advantages when compared to traditional tomography techniques based on limited spectral information. These advantages include a significant reduction in the number of required projection measurements, and an enhanced insensitivity to measurements/inversion uncertainties. These advantages greatly facilitate the practical implementation and application of the tomography technique. This paper reports the development of the technique, and the experimental demonstration of a prototype sensor in a near-adiabatic, atmospheric-pressure laboratory Hencken burner. The spatial and temporal resolution enabled by this new sensing technique is expected to resolve several key issues in practical combustion devices.

We present a novel method for low noise, high-speed, real-time spectroscopy to monitor molecular absorption spectra. The system is based on a rapidly swept, narrowband CW Fourier-domain mode-locked (FDML) laser source for spectral encoding in time and an optically time-multiplexed split-pulse data acquisition system for improved noise performance and sensitivity. An acquisition speed of ~100 kHz, a spectral resolution better than 0.1 nm over a wavelength range of ~1335-1373 nm and a relative noise level of ~5 mOD (~1% minimum detectable base-e absorbance) are achieved. The system is applied for crank-angle-resolved gas thermometry by H(2)O absorption spectroscopy in an engine motoring at 600 and 900 rpm with a precision of ~1%. Influences of various noise sources such as laser phase and intensity noise, trigger and synchronization jitter in the electronic detection system, and the accuracy of available H(2)O absorption databases are discussed.

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A robust method is described for calculating temperature, mole fraction, and pressure from measured absorption spectra (absorption coefficients versus optical frequency). The key components to the method are smoothing, differentiation, spectral axis warping, and linear least-squares fitting. The method works best when spectra span a full rotational branch of the target molecule, but in principle it works for any spectral span. The examples presented assume a measured spectrum over the 7246.4-7518.8 cm(-1) range, which encompasses the R branch of the v(1)+v(3) band of H(2)O; however, the techniques should work for most measured spectra.