Aero-optical transmission effects through the high-speed turbulent flow field

The aerodynamic flow about an aircraft or other vehicles in flight has a marked influence on the performance of the onboard optical sensor system.Missile interceptor seeker windows undergo significant heating and stress during supersonic flight.These effects lead to window and flow field distortions that can significantly degrade the image quality on the seeker.A method is developed to predict the optical transmission of the turbulence flow field.The approach and some computer simulation results are presented.