Computational modelling as an aid to shock tunnel planar laser-induced fluorescence visualisation

A major difficulty associated with performing planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) visualisations of high-speed gas flows is that a large number of experimental parameters affect the quality of the measured data. The acquisition of a high-quality PLIF image may require several free parameters to be varied independently. Doing so in an experiment requires large amounts of time and effort. It is therefore desirable to use a method in which the effects of changing experimental parameters may be investigated before performing the actual experiments. One such method, known as computational-flow-imaging PLIF (CFI-PLIF), is discussed. We present an example of the use of CFI in designing a flow-visualisation experiment.