Affiliations: Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Flow, Department
of Theoretical & Applied Mechanics, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA
61801 | Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of
Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA 61801 | Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA
87545
Abstract: Blast waves created by small exploding bridge wires are used as a
test bed for the development of a particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique
that uses polymers, seeded with scattering particles, as dynamic witness
plates. Combined with pulsed, incoherent schlieren photography, the PIV method
permits visualization of the instantaneous velocity vector field in a plane
cutting through the blast wave.