50 Shades of QUASAR
The QUASAR Group has successfully applied SM techniques and an article about "Laser Diode Self-mixing (SM) Interferometry for Velocity Measurements" by A.S. Alexandrova, V. Tzoganis and C.P. Welsch has just been published in the Optical Engineering journal. Laser self-mixing is usually used for measurement of low velocities and vibrations but this paper explores the use of the method for the measurement of velocity and density of gas jets based on self-contained optical feedback.
Self-mixing interferometry has been applied to flow-velocity measurements often aimed at biological applications, such as blood flow characterisation, Brownian motion and biological species dynamic studies. There has been high interest in this area resulting in a number of papers with measurements of relatively small velocity from 0.1 mm/s to 10 cm/s with high accuracy.
In this paper we demonstrate how higher velocities can be measured and show the impact of different target geometries and characteristics on the quality of the detected signal. We use this as a basis to assess the potential for future gas-jet characterisation applications which would be an entirely new application for this technique. A detailed investigation into different targets is presented covering velocity measurements of solid targets of up to 50 m/s and flow velocities of up to 1 m/s which is significantly higher than any previously published measurement.
Find out more:
A.S. Alexandrova, V. Tzoganis and C.P. Welsch, "Laser diode self-mixing interferometry for velocity Measurements', Optical Engineering 54(3), 034104 (March 2015)