Traldi et al. EPJ Techniques and Instrumentation (2018) 5:4 https://doi.org/10.1140/epjti/s40485-018-0045-1 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Schlieren imaging: a powerful tool for atmospheric plasma diagnostic Enrico Traldi1, Marco Boselli1,2, Emanuele Simoncelli1, Augusto Stancampiano3, Matteo Gherardi1,2, Vittorio Colombo1,2* and Gary S. Settles4* * Correspondence: vittorio.
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[email protected] Abstract 1Department of Industrial Engineering, Alma Mater Studiorum Schlieren imaging has been widely used in science and technology to investigate – Università di Bologna, Viale del phenomena occurring in transparent media. In particular, it has proven to be a Risorgimento 2, 40136 Bologna, Italy powerful tool in fundamental studies and process optimization for atmospheric 4FloViz Inc., Port Matilda, PA 16870, USA pressure plasma diagnostics, providing qualitative and (in some cases) also Full list of author information is quantitative information on the fluid-dynamic characteristics of plasmas generated available at the end of the article by many different types of sources. However, obtaining significant and reliable results by schlieren imaging can be challenging, especially when considering the variety of geometries and applications of atmospheric pressure plasma sources. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt solutions that can address the specific issues of different plasma-assisted processes. In this paper, an overview on the use of the schlieren imaging technique for atmospheric pressure plasma characterization is presented. In the first part, the physical principles behind this technique and the different setups that can be adopted to perform it are presented. In the second part, examples of schlieren imaging applied to different kinds of atmospheric pressure plasmas (non-equilibrium plasma jets, plasma actuators for flow control and thermal plasma sources) are presented, showing how it was used to characterize the fluid-dynamic behavior of plasma-assisted processes and reporting best practices in performing this diagnostic technique.