PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY - HIGH-SPEED TRANSPARENCY SCANNING AND CORRELATION-PEAK LOCATION IN OPTICAL-PROCESSING SYSTEMS

In order to exploit the full potential offered by optical correlation processing in the analysis of transparencies obtained by particle imag e velocimetry one needs to advance the transparency and to track the p osition of correlation peaks at great speed. In the following, this pr ocedure is discussed with reference to an optical analysis system base d on a high-speed ferroelectric optically addressed spatial light modu lator. We present a system that uses scanning optics both to scan thro ugh the input transparency and to locate the correlation peaks in the resulting optical output distributions as a practical solution to the problem. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated at a process ing speed of approximately 500 autocorrelations/s when a one-dimension al acousto-optic output scanning device is used.