Sensors / Diagnostics

Aircraft gas turbine engines have played a preeminent role in establishing and maintaining the air dominance that U.S. military forces have enjoyed for decades. They powered the reconnaissance, transport, fighter/attack aircraft, helicopters, missiles, and many unmanned air vehicles that had great impact in the past and recent wars. Future warfighter requirements continue to drive us to more capable, durable, high performance, and cost-effective aircraft systems. Turbine engines are also a big business for our country providing thousands of jobs and balancing trade.

Since its inception in 2006, Spectral Energies, LLC has continued to explore, develop, and apply state-of-the-art diagnostic and measurement techniques (non-invasive and probe based) to advance the basic understanding of combustion processes in combustor and component test rigs, gas turbine engines, pulsed-detonation engines, piston engines, and other advanced propulsion, power, and fuel systems. The measurement techniques include but not limited to: spectroscopy-based diagnostics methods, multi-species, multi-parameter imaging/spectroscopy, fiber-coupled laser delivery and collection, ultrafast photonics (picosecond, and femtosecond laser-based diagnostics), plasma based sensors, simultaneous imaging and species concentration measurement techniques. These techniques have been and continue to be developed not only for laboratory application, but also to large-scale and full-scale engine tests. The above methods are complemented with LES and DNS modeling in order to better understand the combustion chemistry and physics, combustion instability, and molecular level processes. We continue to collect, process, and prepare large experimental and numerical datasets that quantify the phenomena occurring in combustion and component research rigs, systems and prototypes. Some of the data processing techniques include Fourier and correlation methods, proper orthogonal decomposition, chaos theory, and wavelet analysis. In order to accomplish the stated goals by the Air Force for conceptual, developmental, and fielded systems the company will collaborate with academic institutions, aerospace industry, and other government organizations (e.g., NASA, Army, Navy, DoE, DARPA), program offices such as Joint Program Office (JPO), Systems Program Offices, and Special Program Offices.