Digital Explosive Driven Fragments Imaging System

ABSTRACT: To address the Air Force need for imaging explosively driven fragments, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Digital Explosive Driven Fragments Imaging (DEFIN) system based on an innovative integration of low-cost high-resolution multiple-sensor digital holography that provides wide field-of-view imaging of the explosively driven fragments. Specifically, the DEFIN system uses short (<1 s), high-repetition (100 kHz to 1 MHz) pulsed laser for digital holographic image recording. This innovation will enable the DEFIN system to detect and track trajectories of high-velocity fragments without requiring the use of high-speed cameras. As a result, DEFIN automatically determines the size, velocity, and angle of explosively driven fragments ranging in size from 100s of micron to several centimeters, which directly addresses the Air Force requirements. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of the DEFIN system by designing a system capable of measuring fragments of different sizes and velocities. In Phase II, POC plans to build the hardware based on the Phase I design and validate the measurement technique including testing, modeling and simulation. POC will demonstrate DEFIN on small articles. For large articles we will prove DEFINs validity with modeling and simulation. The post-processing of the data would be automated.; BENEFIT: The DEFIN technology will benefit industries involved in combustion mechanisms (including automobile and aircraft industries) by enabling measurement of injector spray patterns; accurate measurements of fuel droplet size, shape, and velocity, as well as their distribution in 3D volume domains, and velocity variations as a function of time that will provide sufficient design margins to advance their combustion system designs. This technology will yield payoffs in commercial aviation and power generation, heating, combustion mediated synthesis and atmospheric/environment chemistry.