About ISSI

Founded in 1995, Innovative Scientific Solutions Incorporated (ISSI) is an engineering research and development company providing Innovative measurement and instrumentation solutions in the areas of Fluid Dynamics, Aerodynamics, Combustion Analysis, Pressure Sensitive Paint, Temperature Sensitive Paint, Shear Stress Sensors, timing and control devices, molecular iodine cells and lens control devices.  ISSI supports DoD, NASA, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other federal customers, as well as U.S. industry and academic laboratories.  We work with government and industry laboratories in Europe, Asia, and South America, as well as academic organizations worldwide.

We have the expertise and experience to develop and apply advanced optical diagnostic techniques and to produce specialized instrumentation to support these technologies.  We are often called upon to acquire data for the extension and validation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models.  ISSI provides on-site personnel to augment customer-led research teams.  We conduct independent research in our 15,000 sq. ft. campus facilities.  In addition to optical, chemistry, wind tunnel, and electronics laboratories, we have a dedicated prototyping machine shop and electronic design and fabrication facilities.

Why ISSI?

ISSI is a small business with exceptional technical expertise and the ability to quickly respond to dynamic customer needs.  We maintain highly competitive direct cost and overhead rates while providing an excellent work environment and benefits to our employees.  We have a compressed management structure allowing direct employee and customer access to company senior leaders.

Give us a problem and we will develop your solution — beginning with proven scientific principles and proceeding to — engineering research – measurement validation — instrumentation design –fabrication — market introduction — and sales and service, all using in-house resources.  A key factor is our main campus facility that includes 15,000 sq. ft. of optical, chemistry, wind tunnel, and electronics laboratories, a dedicated prototyping machine shop, as well as electronic design and fabrication capabilities.

Pressure Sensitive Paint

Pressure sensitive paint, unlike pressure taps and transducers, provides virtually limitless spatial resolution and can be easily applied and removed from most test surfaces. Moreover, the optical sampling provides a means for low-cost, non-intrusive, full-field surface pressure and temperature measurements very early in the design cycle to enhance extensively the understanding of the aerodynamics underlying force and moment data.

Pressure-sensitive paint technology has emerged as an alternative in determining static and transient surface-pressure fields for aerodynamic applications.  In this approach, pressure sensitivity is based on molecular-oxygen (O2) quenching of luminescent molecules dispersed in a film that is coated onto a test surface. Under the appropriate excitation, the entrapped probe species will luminesce with an intensity that is inversely proportional to the O2 partial pressure.  Because O2 is a constant fraction of air, this method can be used to determine the local surface pressure.

Shear Stress Sensitive Film

Shear Stress Sensitive Film (S3F) is an elastic polymer film embedded with a fluorescent dye and coated with surface markers.  The film is illuminated with an LED light source to excite the dye and surface markers.  The surface is imaged with a scientific camera to monitor deformation of the layer due to shear and normal forces.  The film is imaged unloaded and then loaded to compare the difference in normal force and shear.  Shear is measured by tracking the movement of the surface markers within the film (of known shear modulus and thickness) resulting from an applied tangential load. 

Normal forces are measured by the differing fluorescent dye concentrations (intensity levels) due to normal force loading where pressure gradients are produced. As the film is loaded, it deforms locally and therefore less dye is present in that area. The film cannot be used to measure changes in static pressure, only pressure gradients, which means it is insensitive to static pressure changes.  ISSI’s FootSTEPS system for gait analysis uses S3F technology to make measurements of shear and pressure on the human foot.

Lens Control

ISSI also develops solutions for lens control for CCTV lenses, and EF lenses, including Canon®, Tamron® and Sigma®Using a high quality EF lens is a necessity in any vision application.  Controlling the lens doesn’t require a specific camera to be connected.  The ISSI Canon EF lens controller allows operation of an EF lens on any camera.  Control of a lens is necessary for many applications including:

• Machine Vision Systems
• Aerial Surveillance Systems
• Sorting Systems
• Inspection Systems
• Event Monitoring System
• Video Production
• Astrophotography and Astronomy

ISSI offers complete solutions for lens control and can customize our products to fit customer needs.  All ISSI hardware is made in our machine shop where we can design and manufacture a solution for our customers.

Particle Shadow Velocimetry

Particle shadow velocimetry (PSV) is a novel technique that shares many of the attributes of microPIV and Forward Scatter PIV (fsPIV). It utilizes low-power pulsed light sources such as LEDs to measure the displacement of seed particles in a flow. PSV images can also be used to characterize particle parameters such as size and shape. Since this is a volumetric illumination technique, it relies on the receiver optics to optimize the depth of field for the measurement. Any pulsed light system can be used as the light source; however, LEDs are particularly well suited since they can be over-driven in a short-pulse mode to produce intense sub-microsecond light pulses. Furthermore, the use of LED’s combined with a high speed camera results in a high-speed system with bandwidth of 10’s of kHz. Because the technique does not rely upon weak-particle light scattering, lasers are neither necessary nor recommended for use with this approach.

Molecular Iodine Cells

The spectrum of molecular Iodine includes discreet rotational and vibrational bands with very fine structure in the visible (490-650 nm) spectrum.  For this reason, iodine has been used as frequency references for years.  More recently, iodine has been used as frequency discriminators in Planar Doppler Velocimetry (PDV) and Filtered Rayleigh Scattering (FRS) systems.  ISSI iodine cells feature a rugged aluminum housing and are built to customer specifications for the experimental setup.

Our Customers and Markets

ISSI’s current and previous customers include the following government, industry, and academic leaders.  We look forward to adding you to this list or partnering with you to provide enhanced services to your customers

• Air Force Research Laboratory
• Applied Research Laboratory Penn State University
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Office of Naval Research
• Air Force Office of Scientific Research
• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• National Institutes of Health
• U.S. Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center
• 46th Test Wing Landing Gear Test Facility
• Pratt and Whitney
• General Electric Aircraft Engines
• Boeing
• Systems Applications International
• Honeywell
• UK Aircraft Research Association
• Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
• Mitsubishi International Corporation
• CIRA – Italian Aerospace Research Centre
• NRC-CNRC – National Research Council Canada
• ISL – The French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis
• DNW German-Dutch Wind Tunnels
• CTA – Brazilian General-Command for Aerospace Technology
• South Korean Agency for Defense Development
• KARI – Korean Aerospace Research Institute
• Numerous U.S. , European, and Far Eastern Universities
• Ford Motor Company