On the Application of Endoscopic Background-Oriented Schlieren Technique for Near-Field Investigation of Density Field

Background-Oriented Schlieren (BOS) is a non-intrusive and non-destructive technique for measuring density gradient in transparent media. Given the dependency of the refractive index and density of a medium, its static density field can be determined as a secondary measurand from BOS measurements. For an ideal gas, if the pressure variation is negligible, the static temperature field can be determined as a tertiary measurand. While the BOS technique for far-field measurements has been extensively researched, the implementation of this technique for near-field measurements still needs to be investigated. Near-field BOS is especially important for the measurement and visualization of internal flows, such as turbomachine flows, in which access to flow passage is limited and might be feasible using endoscopes (borescopes). This paper presents the features and challenges of the endoscopic BOS technique and presents methods and solutions for the application of this method in near-field measurements. The features of endoscopic BOS records as well as the comparison of endoscopic BOS and BOS measurements with camera are presented.