Sally Bane
· Director of Laboratory & Hands On Education and Associate Professor of AAEVerifiedPurdue University · Aeronautics and Astronautics
Active 2005–2026
About
Sally Bane is an Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University, where she also serves as the Director of Laboratory & Hands-On Education since 2011. Her research interests include plasmas for combustion and flow control, specifically nano-second repetitively pulsed (NRP) plasmas, plasma-assisted ignition and combustion, plasma control of high-speed flows, and shock wave/boundary layer interaction. She focuses on the physics of supersonic and hypersonic turbulent flows, employing optical methods for high-speed flow and combustion visualization and measurement, such as PIV, BOS, and schlieren image velocimetry, along with numerical tools for optical system modeling and design. Her work encompasses experimental combustion and propulsion, ignition detonations, and flame acceleration, with a particular emphasis on plasma physics, hypersonic aerodynamics, flow control, and optical diagnostics.
Research topics
- Materials science
- Physics
- Optics
- Chemistry
- Atomic physics
- Mechanics
Selected publications
Measurement Science and Technology · 2026-03-09
articleOpen accessSenior authorAbstract This work presents a MATLAB-based, open source tool for generating synthetic images, e.g. background oriented schlieren (BOS), in non-homogeneous refractive index field environments induced by the presence of density gradients. The tool allows the user model their specific optical setup and input a known flow density field (e.g. from CFD simulations) to generate experiment-like images using geometric ray tracing. MIRAGE (MATLAB Implementation of Ray tracing for Analysis of variable density Gradient Environments) can be used by researchers for designing experiments and assessing post-processing schemes, error analyses, and uncertainty quantification models. The simulation begins by initializing light rays from the light source or background pattern. The light rays are then propagated through the user-defined optical components and density gradient field before intensity is accumulated at the camera sensor plane using a cosine-fourth-power law and bilinear weighting scheme. Ray tracing through the density gradient field is performed using a fourth order Runge–Kutta scheme and is validated using a simulation of a Luneberg lens. The entire program is also validated by generating a synthetic BOS image using CFD data of a low Mach number turbulent mixing layer. The density gradients calculated from the synthetic BOS image are in good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the CFD span-averaged density gradients. The entire program is housed in a graphical user interface (GUI), making it easy and intuitive for the user to conduct simulations using their own datasets and experimental setups.
Time Resolved BOS Velocimetry of Synthetic Raytraced Images of a Low Speed Mixing Flow
2026-01-08
articleSenior authorBackground oriented schlieren (BOS) based time-resolved velocimetry is proposed as a non-intrusive experimental method to simultaneously measure span-averaged velocity and density. Although past work has successfully shown BOS velocimetry to estimate temporally averaged profiles, the potential of spatio-temporally resolved BOS velocimetry remains relatively unexplored. To evaluate the feasibility of BOS velocimetry, synthetic images were generated from an LES data set of a low-convective-Mach-number (
2026-01-08
articleSenior authorPlasma-Assisted Combustion of the Methane-Air Flame is presented in the current work with focus on the control of the thermoacoustic instability. two different closed-loop strategies with real-time feedback from the microphone pressure signals is explored demonstrating the effectiveness of the plasma phase matching with the thermo-acoustic instability. The tests have shown attempts of phase-matched plasma discharge a with very low plasma-to-flame power ratio (order of 1%) resulting in the instability amplitude suppression around 50% at different operation points. Microcontroller based phase detection proves to be effective in primary instability frequency amplitude suppression, indicating that phase matching is better instability control strategy than continuous plasma burst to control instability.
Experiments in Fluids · 2025-01-22 · 5 citations
articleSenior author2025-01-03
articleTwo pulsers with voltage rise times of ~5 ns and ~22 ns were used to generate NRP discharges with supplied peak voltages of ~16 kV between two pin electrodes separated by 5mm at an atmospheric pressure quiescent air condition. Temporally resolved, single-shot, EFISH measurements were performed using a femtosecond laser, ~800 nm fundamental wavelength, with an energy of ~200 μJ/pulse. The frequency-doubled second harmonic signal, ~400 nm, was collected using a time-gated ICCD camera. The EFISH data shows an enhanced electric field; more than two times compared to the Laplacian field measurements obtained using the high-voltage probe and BCS data. The rate of increase of electric field is observed to depend directly on the rise-time of the pulser. The spike in the electric field is a consequence of the short rise-time of the high-voltage pulse which causes a time delay between electric field increase and actual filamentation process.
Experiments in Fluids · 2025-06-01 · 2 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorAbstract Background-oriented schlieren (BOS)-based velocimetry is a potential method for achieving simultaneous measurements of density and velocity in a flow with density gradients. Similar to schlieren velocimetry, BOS velocimetry relies on (1) refraction of light due to density gradients and (2) the presence of turbulent eddies or contrast by high-/low-density fluid parcels to serve as seeding particles. Previous attempts at BOS velocimetry suffered from compounded noise, error propagation, and significant loss of spatial resolution due to the requirement for an additional round of interrogation. Kymography-based BOS velocimetry has been shown to produce accurate velocity measurements but at the expense of spatiotemporally averaging the flow field. The optical flow displacement estimation method was shown to be ineffective to yield useful velocity information for schlieren velocimetry, due to the large displacements of turbulent eddies between adjacent time instances. In the current work, a novel approach for BOS velocimetry is proposed that uses deformable image registration (DIR) in each of the two interrogation steps to obtain accurate, spatiotemporally resolved velocity fields. Ray-tracing simulations using density fields from CFD of low-convective-Mach-number turbulent mixing layers are leveraged to generate synthetic, experiment-like BOS images. The DIR method using isotropic total variation regularization is first used to reconstruct the instantaneous density gradient fields from the BOS images. Then, DIR using Maxwell’s demons is used in the second round to measure the displacements of turbulent eddies between two adjacent time instances. Comparison of the velocities extracted from BOS against the CFD fluid velocities demonstrates excellent capability of the proposed methodology..
2025-01-03
articleDielectric barrier plasma discharges on a nanosecond timescale have the capacity to generate oxygen radicals and facilitate lean combustion. This type of plasma has prompted research into its interactions with detonation waves. In this work, simultaneous schlieren and shadowgraph imaging at 500 kHz rates are used in an optically accessible linear detonation channel to observe the impact of nanosecond dielectric barrier discharges (ns-DBD) on H2 - air detonation waves. A 20 kV Eagle Harbor Pulser (EHP) is employed to generate the ns-DBD discharges for 100 ms at a set pulse frequency of 100 kHz and 100 ns pulse widths. A Shchelkin spiral is placed in front of the ignitor to promote deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT). Post DDT, the leading shock wave is observed with shadowgraph immediately after interaction of the detonation wave with a perpendicular plane of streamer and glow plasma. Changes in density gradients are then observed using schlieren imaging. Hydrogen and air are used as the primary fuel and oxidizer, and equivalence ratios are varied between 0.7 – 1.0. The experimental data is then compared to simulations of enhanced detonability for various plasma configurations. Although additional experimentation is necessary to optimize plasma energies, this study presents a novel visualization of a ns-DBD plasma assisted detonation wave.
Integration of Virtual and Physical Labs for Fluid Dynamics Education
2024-01-04 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingContinuously increasing student enrollment in engineering programs presents a significant challenge for laboratory courses, where equipment and physical space are limited. The result is that lab groups become unmanageably large, hindering student engagement, and forfeiting the learning opportunity to gain meaningful hands-on experience. At Purdue University, the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AAE) and the School of Mechanical Engineering (ME), in collaboration with the School of Engineering Education (ENE), are addressing this issue by developing a Virtual Lab platform for their fluid mechanics and aerodynamics courses. A virtual wind tunnel has been developed and implemented in the pre-lab exercise for a Wake Survey lab, and a survey was used to collect feedback from the students. The response to the virtual lab platform was overwhelmingly positive, with respondents expressing overall satisfaction with the virtual lab experience, emphasizing its role in enhancing their understanding of theoretical concepts and preparing them for the physical lab.
2024-01-04 · 6 citations
articleSenior authorBackground oriented schlieren (BOS) is a non-intrusive optical method for measuring density gradients in a fluid flow based on changes of local refractive index. The density gradients can be obtained by comparing two images of a dot pattern, with and without the presence of the test article. Telecentric BOS has been shown to mitigate limited spatial resolution and non-paraxial effects present in conventional BOS. In this work, telecentric BOS is used to quantitatively characterize a Mach 2 zero pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer. Turbulent structures present in the flow are identified and wall-normal density gradient profiles are extracted from the BOS measurement results. Convective velocity of the turbulent structures is extracted using kymography.
Research Square · 2024-04-22 · 5 citations
preprintOpen accessSenior author
Frequent coauthors
- 35 shared
Lalit K. Rajendran
Purdue University West Lafayette
- 33 shared
Pavlos P. Vlachos
Purdue University West Lafayette
- 20 shared
Bhavini Singh
Los Alamos National Laboratory
- 20 shared
Ravichandra Jagannath
- 9 shared
J. E. Shepherd
California Institute of Technology
- 8 shared
M. Razi Nalim
Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis
- 8 shared
Jonathan Poggie
- 7 shared
Aman Satija
Purdue University West Lafayette
Education
- 2010
PhD, Aeronautics
California Institute of Technology
- 2005
MS, Aeronautics
California Institute of Technology
- 2004
BS, Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Awards & honors
- None listed
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