Application of holographic interferometry for evaluation of 3D Navier-Stokes calculations

Holographic interferometry is a nonintrusive optical measuring technique which can potentially capture instantaneous information about a complete 3D flow field onto a single holographic image. However, subsequently extracting the flow data so that it can be used to validate CFD results is for most practical wind tunnel applications not yet possible. The approach applied in this paper is to compare experimental interferograms with equivalent images obtained by postprocessing the CFD solution. We have investigated transonic flow in a wind tunnel environment and computationally reconstructed both 2D image-plane interferograms and full 3D holographic interferograms. These comparisons have subsequently helped us to evaluate and improve our 3D Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes calculations. (Author)