Optical contouring of an acrylic surface for non-intrusive diagnostics in pipe-flow investigations

摘要

In this work, an acrylic surface was optically contoured to correct for the optical distortion caused by a transparent pipe wall. This method can be applied to non-invasive viewing/imaging techniques for fluid flow experiments. Software tools were developed to aid in the design of an optically contoured acrylic test section for pipe-flow experiments. Numerical models were computed for a standard acrylic pipe, inner diameter 57.15 mm, with water enclosed. An optical contour prototype was machined on a 5-axis CNC machine, and polished with 1–15 μm diamond paste, alleviating any surface imperfections without significantly altering the contoured surface. Experiments were then performed to measure the emerging optical wavefront and was found to emerge planar when utilizing the optical contour. It was determined that the wavefront was corrected to within ten wavelengths of a Helium–Neon (He–Ne) laser beam.