The United States of America As Represented by the Department of Health

Owen J Deters

C Brent Bargeron

A laser Doppler velocimeter which can measure fluid flow in three dimensions, employing a laser beam projected through a rotating diffraction grating and spaced lenses, with a beam splitter in the major optical path between two lenses ahead of the flow channel through which the fluid passes. Selected pairs of laser-derived beams are directed through the fluid and intersect at a predetermined point in the fluid. The movement of the particles through interference patterns formed by the intersecting laser-derived beams generates further-modulated scattered light, which is focused on a photomultiplier tube, from the output of which a fluid velocity directional component signal is derived for each pair. There are four laser-divided beams, and different pairs of these beams can be selected, to provide measurements from which the components of the fluid velocity along three mutually orthogonal directions can be derived.

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Silver Spring, MD, United States of America

Owen J Deters