An optical fiber probe system for measuring the local void fraction in the air-water two-phase flow was developed with a 1550 nm light source. Air was injected through a nozzle placed in the center of the bottom wall of a water-filled cylindrical tank. The optical fiber probe having a diameter of $125{\mu}m$ was sufficiently thin to resolve the air-water interface of the bubbly flows. To verify the performance of the optical fiber probe, the synchronized high speed visualization study using a high speed camera was carried out. Comparison between the optical signals and the instantaneous bubble diffraction images confirms that the optical fiber probe is very accurate to measure the void fraction in two-phase flows. The estimated bubble diameter and the rising velocity by the optical fiber probe have 1% and 5% of accuracy, respectively.

Increasing the active catalyst surface area is important in improving a converter's efficiency. In addition, uniform flow is advantageous in that it produces more efficient catalytic conversion. This results in the ability to use a smaller catalytic converter with uniform flow as opposed to a larger converter requirement for non-uniform flow. Therefore, it is important to characterize the internal flow of the catalytic converter. To characterize the system's flow patterns, velocity measurements were taken at the mid and exit planes of a ceramic honeycomb catalytic converter at flow rates of 37.8 l/s and 94.4 l/s. Measurements were conducted using LDV. The profiles were measured along both the major and minor axis of the planes. Primary flow direction velocities measured along the minor axis, at both flow rates, varied greatly at the mid plane and somewhat at the exit plane. The areas of greatest air flow were seen near the edges of the walls and on the side of the converter opposite the flow's entrance region. It also appears that the high velocities opposite the intake are due to the design of the entrance region. The entrance region is possibly too small to properly redirect the vertically entering fluid into an evenly distributed flow in the primary flow direction.

High-performance smartphones, equipped with a digital camera and an application software, can render conventional bench-top laboratory instruments mobile at affordable costs. As the smartphone-based devices are portable and wireless, they have wide applications especially in providing point-of-care (POC) tests in resource-constrained areas. We developed a hand-held diagnostic system, Mobile SmartScope, which consists of a small optical unit integrated with a smartphone. The performance of the SmartScope was favorably compared with that of conventional light microscopy in detecting and quantifying red blood cells. We also evaluated the fluorescence detection limit of the SmartScope incorporated with a blue light-emitting diode and appropriate optical filters by using fluorescently labeled microbeads for intensity calibration.

In recent years a unique drug delivery system named as the transdermal drug delivery system has been developed which can deliver drug particles to the human skin without using any external needle. The solid drug particles are accelerated by means of high speed gas flow through a shock tube imparting enough momentum so that particles can penetrate through the outer layer of the skin. Different systems have been tried and tested in order to make it more convenient for clinical use. One of them is the contoured shock tube system (CST). The contoured shock tube consists of a classical shock tube connected with a correctly expanded supersonic nozzle. A set of bursting membrane are placed upstream of the nozzle section which retains the drug particle as well as initiates the gas flow (act as a diaphragm in a shock tube). The key feature of the CST system is it can deliver particles with a controllable velocity and spatial distribution. The flow dynamics of the contoured shock tube is analyzed numerically using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). To validate the numerical approach pressure histories in different sections on the CST are compared with the experimental results. The key features of the flow field have been studied and analyzed in details. To investigate the performance of the CST system flow behavior through the shock tube under different operating conditions are also observed.