Pratt & Whitney and Virginia Tech announce new thrust-calculating technology

Pratt & Whitney and Virginia Tech have announced a brand-new technology, which will use lasers to accurately measure important gas turbine engine factors such as velocity, temperature, and density. This technology, which is pending a patent, is known as Filtered Rayleigh Scattering for Thrust measurement, or FRST.   FRST makes use of the fact that light scattering from air molecules above a laser-illuminated area, will provide information about the gas flow field. A laser beam is shone across the turbine’s gas path and a high-quality camera keeps track of the scattering light. This recording is then filtered to eliminate signal corruptions.