Abstract
Laser induced streaming is one of the interesting phenomena. When we provide a highly concentrated energy in a small region by laser beam, an induced streaming, such as micro shock wave or laser induced thermal acoustics is observed in the test region. In the present paper, a micro shockwave in air which was induced by laser irradiation was observed by shadow graphic technique, and the shock Mach number was measured from the flow images. The density gradient behind the shock wave was measured by speckle photographic technique. While the induced shock wave is produced in general by the ablation of a metal or gas breakdown due to the high density energy of laser irradiation, the present paper focused on relatively low density energy domain.
