Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Mixed-Phase Ice Crystal and Droplet Characterization and Thermometry
Project Description
This effort proposes to design, build, and demonstrate a new instrument for icing research and flight safety capable of discriminating liquid water from ice while simultaneously measuring the diameter, velocity, and temperature of droplets or the velocity and size for ice crystals. From these individual particle characteristics the total liquid water content (LWC) and the total water content (TWC) of the flow may be found. This non-intrusive, laser-based, point measurement diagnostic will operate in an off-axis, backscatter configuration at a range of working distances appropriate to characterize laboratory-scale experiments, icing tunnel flows, free jet test facilities, or flight conditions at altitude. The proposed instrument will apply phase-Doppler interferometry, polarization ratio phase discrimination, droplet rainbow thermometry, and cross-polarization imaging to each particle measured. This will provide joint measures of liquid/solid phase, velocity, diameter or particle size, and droplet temperature. Furthermore, there is redundancy built into the measurements. For instance, the droplet diameter can be measured both by phase-Doppler interferometry and by rainbow thermometry and all four measurement techniques can discriminate solid ice from liquid droplets. While no single instrument can measure all possible cloud droplets, the proposed instrument can be configured to measure droplets from as small as 3 um to larger than 3 mm in diameter.
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Anticipated Benefits
This SBIR effort will lead to a fully-developed instrument capable of simultaneously and redundantly measuring multiple physical properties of droplets and ice crystals. NASA's research into flight safety and aircraft propulsion would benefit from the successful commercialization of this instrument. Other governmental, academic, and industrial research groups in the areas of aircraft and flight safety, air-breathing and rocket propulsion, transportation, spray drying, and other industrial processes would all stand to benefit from a diagnostic capable of exceptional phase discrimination and/or remote droplet diameter/temperature measurement. There are several possible paths to commercialization of this work either as improvements on our current commercial products as entirely new products.
This innovation will be offered as an option to our current PDI products. We believe there will be demand in industries such as spray drying and deposition, painting and coating, and general multi-phase flow research. While of obvious interest to meteorologists and icing researchers, we believe that the larger market is that of spray combustion, propulsion, and transportation. Moreover, there are a wide range of food processing applications using spray drying. Efficient energy utilization and product quality are key concerns in these applications. Within the meteorology and icing research markets there is potential to create two separate product lines. Some researchers will prefer an in situ device that can be placed in a large wind tunnel flow or mounted to an aircraft exterior. Others may prefer an ex situ instrument that can be placed outside of the flow – the solicitation specifically mentions the profiling across the span of an engine duct. The proposed diagnostic methods are all suitable for both styles of measurement. Furthermore, since the proposed layout involves the use of backscatter collection, such an instrument could be deployed from within an aircraft's fuselage and pointed out a window with no impact on the flow or external mounting requirements. Such an instrument configuration could move beyond a research tool and be used as a real-time flight safety instrument to characterize the icing threat to the airframe. More »
This innovation will be offered as an option to our current PDI products. We believe there will be demand in industries such as spray drying and deposition, painting and coating, and general multi-phase flow research. While of obvious interest to meteorologists and icing researchers, we believe that the larger market is that of spray combustion, propulsion, and transportation. Moreover, there are a wide range of food processing applications using spray drying. Efficient energy utilization and product quality are key concerns in these applications. Within the meteorology and icing research markets there is potential to create two separate product lines. Some researchers will prefer an in situ device that can be placed in a large wind tunnel flow or mounted to an aircraft exterior. Others may prefer an ex situ instrument that can be placed outside of the flow – the solicitation specifically mentions the profiling across the span of an engine duct. The proposed diagnostic methods are all suitable for both styles of measurement. Furthermore, since the proposed layout involves the use of backscatter collection, such an instrument could be deployed from within an aircraft's fuselage and pointed out a window with no impact on the flow or external mounting requirements. Such an instrument configuration could move beyond a research tool and be used as a real-time flight safety instrument to characterize the icing threat to the airframe. More »
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Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Artium Technologies | Lead Organization | Industry | Sunnyvale, California |
Glenn Research Center
(GRC)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Cleveland, Ohio |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
California
-
Ohio
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