UC Berkeley

Flow visualization methods are as old as the study of fluid dynamics, yet there remain major limitations to the types of flows these laboratory methods can measure. In particular, flows with numerous moving refractive interfaces and flows with opaque fluids or environments are all difficult or impossible to measure with conventional optical methods. A wide range of important fluid flows have one or more of these characteristics, including suspensions, bubbly flows, and scalar mixing flows. X-ray image-based particle velocimetry can overcome many of the limitations of optical methods, but has remained difficult to implement in a laboratory setting. This dissertation presents work on the development of X-ray particle velocimetry in the laboratory, with the hope of vastly increasing the accessibility and applicability of these techniques. Additionally, this dissertation presents a study on vitrification thermodynamics using X-ray image-based measurement techniques to demonstrate the broad applicability of said techniques.

New developments in laboratory X-ray imaging have the power to reveal interesting physics in a variety of fields by enabling researchers to see what they once could not. This dissertation hopes to demonstrate the utility of these techniques and inspire new ones.