PIV evaluation algorithms for industrial applications

Particle image velocimetry (PIV) is now applied with confidence in industrial facilities such as large wind tunnels, yielding data not possible before. Despite the difficulties that arise in such environments, the conventional PIV methods can provide high quality data, especially when dealing with spatial and temporal slowly varying values of the flow magnitudes. Obtaining highly spatially resolved velocity fields is still challenging due to the inherent difficulties in these industrial facilities, such as large velocity gradients, background light and reflections. This work has focused on: (i) the behaviour of conventional PIV when the conventional limits of the processing algorithm are approached or surpassed and (ii) which kind of advanced methods can reduce the main sources of error that are characterized in this paper. The focus is on the description of vortex flows. Group locking, a major source of error, is introduced, modelled and metrologically characterized. The part of the study devoted to advanced methods deals with one that has already shown to be of profit in images from industrial facilities, local field correction PIV (LFC-PIV). This is a robust and an accurate method, able to obtain a high yield of measurements in these environments, without the need of external adjustment to each particular situation. To illustrate this point, some examples of processing of real images are given. The conclusions of this work suggest guidelines about the error figures when measuring flows with embedded vortex using conventional and advanced methods in industrial facilities.