A green laser flashes across a high-pressure spray that fuels a jet engine. Those flashes, some just 50 millionths of a second apart, freeze the droplets of fuel for a camera to record and a computer to analyze.

This is particle image velocimetry, just one of the advanced flow-diagnostic tools used by Hui Hu, an Iowa State University associate professor of aerospace engineering, and his research team to study the performance of the nozzles that spray fuel into jet engines.

It’s a tool that Hu is now using to help the Goodrich Corp. Engine Components team of West Des Moines test and characterize the next generation of fuel nozzles. The joint project is supported by a $78,305 grant from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, a state economic development program designed to champion development of technologies with commercial potential and to support the growth of companies using those technologies.

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