SBIR-STTR Award

The development of future generations of high speed rotorcraft will require improvements in the understanding of basic flow-field phenomena and in the understanding and modeling of rotorcraft aerodynamics, dynamics, and acoustics. Optical images, such as shadowgraphs and schlieren, of three-dimensional (3-D) flow-field phenomena will be used to enhance this understanding and to validate design tools, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. The proposed innovation is a turn-key system that combines image acquisition, image processing, and stereo-optic transformations. This system will identify and locate flow-field phenomena in 2-D images and transform image measurements to 3-D positions and orientations. It will have an interactive environment that guides the user through the selection and implementation of various system tools.This interactive environment will make extensive use of Graphical User Interfaces (GUI's) designed to facilitate training and ensure user friendliness.

Potential Commercial Applications:
A turn-key system for acquiring flow-field images, identifying flow-field phenomena in the images, and determining their location in 3-D space can be used for any flow-visualization study in air and/or water. Furthermore, the algorithms for tracing lines and transforming line measurements to 3-D coordinateshave other commercial applications in, for example, the medical and security industries.