High-speed flow visualization with a new digital video camera

Submitted for the DFD05 Meeting of The American Physical Society High-speed flow visualization with a new digital video camera JASON VOLPE, GARY SETTLES, Penn State University — Scientific photography opened new vistas upon high-speed physics in the previous century. Now, high-speed digital cameras are becoming available to replace the older photographic technology with similar speed, resolution, and light sensitivity but vastly better utility and user-friendliness. Here we apply a Photron Fastcam APX-RS digital camera that is capable of megapixel image resolution at 3000 frames/sec up to 250,000 frames/sec at lower resolution. Frame exposure is separately adjustable down to 1 microsecond. Several of the “icons” of high-speed flow visualization are repeated here, including firecracker and gram-range explosions, popping a champagne cork, vortex rings, shock emergence from a shock tube, the splash of a milk drop, and the burst of a toy balloon. Many of these visualizations utilize traditional schlieren or shadowgraph optics to show shock wave propagation. Still frames and brief movies will be shown. Gary Settles Penn State Univ. Date submitted: 09 Aug 2005 Electronic form version 1.4