Publisher's Synopsis
The relative signal strength of electrostriction-only (no thermal grating) laser-induced thermal acoustics (LITA) in gas-phase air is reported as a function of temperature T and pressure P. Measurements were made in the free stream of a variable Mach number supersonic wind tunnel, where T and P are varied simultaneously as Mach number is varied. Using optical heterodyning, the measured signal amplitude (related to the optical reflectivity of the acoustic grating) was averaged for each of 11 flow conditions and compared to the expected theoretical dependence of a pure-electrostriction LITA process, where the signal is proportional to the square root of [P*P /( T*T*T)]. Herring, Gregory C. Langley Research Center NASA/TM-2015-218762, L-20562, NF1676L-21439
