3DAerosol Backscatter Correlation Lidar Velocimeter for Flight Testing

AeroMancer Technologies proposes to develop an 3D Airspeed Backscatter Correlation (3D-ABC) lidar velocimeter for in-flight boundary layer flow visualization and airspeed measurement in spatially and temporally resolved 3D flow fields using a rugged, eye-safe, daytime-capable, reliable Infrared (IR) optical device. AeroMancerrsquo;s technique for measuring 3-component spatially and temporally resolved airspeeds is based on the time-lag correlation of aerosol density fluctuations from a 3D map of lidar elastic backscatter signals. Other methods for standoff quantitative flow visualization of complex flow fields have limitations in outdoor testing. The strength of this approach and its advantage over other optical remote sensing techniques is the use of a single-ended system to simultaneously obtain 3D flow fields over a relatively large measurement volume (15m x 27deg; x 20deg;), with minimal setup time and to concurrently perform 3D hard-target mapping using an eye-safenbsp;optical system, thereby reducing size, complexity and alignment requirements.nbsp;In a recentnbsp;NASA SBIR Phase II project, AeroMancer developed a novel prototype scanning lidar for high-resolution 3D global airspeed mappingnbsp;in wind tunnels, whichnbsp;captures 3Dnbsp;maps of seeding particle densitynbsp;in the airflow using elastic backscatter from an eye-safe, 1550 nm wavelength IR lidar beam that is rapidly scanned using a new interleaved scanning method.nbsp;A 3D cross-correlation algorithm is used tonbsp;extract 3D airflow profiles from pairs of 3D images.In this project, AeroMancer proposes to build on this existing design by identifying the measurement requirements for in-flight aerodynamic testing;nbsp;system improvements to enable daytime operation;nbsp;requirementsnbsp;for aircraft integration including size, weight power and cooling and eye-safety; and design changes to meet the needs of outdoor testing. Using recommendations from this analysis, AeroMancer will develop a conceptual design of the proposed instrument system.