Light Scattering Measurements of Turbulent Flows

Abstract


Light scattering measurements of flows are made by scattering light from particles embedded in the flow. Usually some light pattern is created in the flow and the velocity is inferred by measuring the time scale of the pattern registered with a particle goes through it. This makes for an interesting interpretation problem, since: 1) the particles are randomly placed in the fluid and thus come through when they want to, not when you want them to; 2) The photon detection process is intrinsically stochastic and 3) the object you are trying to measure, turbulence, is intrinsically random. The talk will cover basic methods of dealing with the problems outlined above and perhaps more interesting on how one estimates the accuracy of the measurements. Straight-forward statistical modelling will be used for the first part and Maximum Likelihood or Maximum A Posteriori methods will be used in the latter.

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