Investigation of Condensation/Clustering Effects on Rayleigh Scattering Measurements in a Hypersonic Wind Tunnel

Rayleigh scattering, a nonintrusive measurement technique for the measurement of density in a hypersonic wind tunnel, is under investigation at Wright Laboratory's Mach 6 wind tunnel. Several adverse effects, i.e., extraneous scatter off walls and windows, hinder Rayleigh scattering measurements. Condensation and clustering of flow constituents also present formidable obstacles. Overcoming some of these difficulties, measurements have been achieved while the Mach 6 test section was pumped down to a vacuum, as well as for actual tunnel operation for various stagnation pressures at fixed stagnation temperatures. Stagnation pressures ranged from 0.69 MPa to 6.9 MPa at fixed stagnation temperatures of 511, 556, and 611 K. Rayleigh scatter results show signal levels much higher than expected for molecular scattering in the wind tunnel. Even with higher than expected signals, scattering measurements have been made in the flowfield of an 8-degree half-angle blunt nose cone with a nose radius of 1.5 cm.