The Penn State Gas Dynamics Lab educates students and conducts research on gas dynamics, flow visualization, optical flow diagnostics, and a variety of thermal-science topics important to industrial processes and national security. The thermal convection from the human body and its sampling for security screening, medical diagnosis, etc. is one of our specialties. Similarly we are interested in nozzle design and nozzles of all types, and we pride ourselves on being able to visualize flows that no one else can make visible. We are primarily an experimental laboratory, but computation and analysis also play a role in many of our research projects. We consider ourselves experts in schlieren and shadowgraph methods of flow imaging at speeds up to a million frames per second, and we have built the world's largest test facility for this purpose. Bright young people are always encouraged to contact us about research projects at the undergraduate and graduate levels. More than 15 PhD's and an even larger number of Master of Science degrees have been conferred by Penn State University based on research conducted in our lab. We teach an holistic approach to engineering research, emphasizing informed, clever experimentation aimed at revealing the underlying physics of a problem and suggesting potential innovations. Students in the Gas Dynamics Lab write and present their own technical papers at national or international technical meetings, with assistance from the Laboratory Staff. Upon graduation, our students are thoroughly prepared for research careers in academia, government, or industrial laboratories.

The background-oriented schlieren technique is used with a natural background (the edge of a cornfield) to reveal the convective heat-transfer plume from a hot automobile.  Minute shifts in the background due to light refraction by the rising hot air are revealed by comparing digital images with and without the automobile present.  This is conveniently done using digital image correlation software made by Correlated Solutions, Inc.  This image and a high-speed example of firing a rifle will be used in a paper now in preparation to illustrate the optical constraints involved in "natural-background-oriented schlieren imaging" (to be presented at the 13th International Symposium on Flow Visualization, Nice, France, July 2008).

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© 2005 Penn State Gas Dynamics Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University

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