Synthetic aperture rainbow refractometry.

This work proposed a synthetic aperture rainbow refractometry (SARR) by synthesizing rainbow signals of the same droplet with dual-wavelength laser beams, in order to increase the aperture of rainbow refractometry. In this way, the SARR can apply to long distance and small droplets measurement. An achromatic imaging system, which simultaneously records while separating the two rainbow signals in two channels of a color image, is elaborately designed. A data processing algorithm is developed to retrieve the optimal droplet refractive index and size. Numerical simulations of different droplet sizes from 10 µm to 200 µm certify the viability of the SARR. Proof-of-concept experiments of micron-sized ethanol droplets are performed with 1650 mm measurement distance. Results show that the SARR can accurately measure droplet refractive index and size with uncertainties of 2.3 × 10-4 and 2µm, respectively. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed SARR are successfully demonstrated, paving the way for rainbow refractometry applied to large-scale industrial applications.

Accurate droplet depth displacement measurement with time-resolved astigmatic interferometric particle imaging.

The astigmatic interferometric particle imaging (AIPI) model reveals that the fringe orientation shifts with droplet depth displacement, and their relationships are quantitatively formulated. The depth displacement is directly evaluated from the relative angular shift of the fringes with angular cross power spectral density, and this algorithm isolates the uncertainty of droplet depth position from depth displacement. Proof-of-concept experiments on micrometer-sized transparent droplets with a 5 kHz AIPI system demonstrates that droplet three-dimensional (3D) trajectories are accurately obtained with the accuracy of depth displacement up to tens of micrometers, improving an order of magnitude from hundreds of microns in a traditional Lagrangian framework by comparing droplet depth positions.

Astigmatic dual-beam interferometric particle imaging for metal droplet 3D position and size measurement.

We propose astigmatic dual-beam interferometric particle imaging (ADIPI) to simultaneously measure the three-dimensional (3D) position and size of spherical metal droplets. A theoretical model reveals that the orientation and spacing of the ADIPI fringes generated from the two reflections propagating through an astigmatic imaging system relate to the depth position and size, respectively. Proof-of-concept experiments on micron-sized gallium droplets are performed, and the tilted fringes in elliptical patterns are observed in the ADIPI interferogram, confirming theoretical predictions. Droplet 3D position and size are determined with ADIPI, and the relative discrepancies are within 5% and 2% compared to those with a dual-view digital inline holography system, demonstrating the feasibility and high accuracy of ADIPI.