Tomographic 3D-PIV and Applications

Tomographic particle image velocimetry is a 3D PIV technique based on the illumination, recording, reconstruction and analysis of tracer-particle motion within a three-dimensional measurement volume. The recently developed technique makes use of several simultaneous views of the illuminated particles, typically 4, and their three-dimensional reconstruction as a light-intensity distribution by means of optical tomography. The reconstruction is performed with the MART algorithm (multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique), yielding a 3D distribution of light intensity discretized over an array of voxels. The reconstructed tomogram pair is then analyzed by means of 3D crosscorrelation with an iterative multigrid volume-deformation technique, returning the three-component velocity vector distribution over the measurement volume. The implementation of the tomographic technique in time-resolved mode by means of high repetition rate PIV hardware has the capability to yield 4D velocity information. The first part of the chapter describes the operation principles and gives a detailed assessment of the tomographic reconstruction algorithm performance based upon a computer-simulated experiment. The second part of the chapter proposes four applications on two flow cases: 1. the transitional wake behind a circular cylinder; 2. the turbulent boundary layer developing over a flat plate. For the first case, experiments in air at ReD = 2700 are described together with the experimental assessment of the tomographic reconstruction accuracy. In this experiment a direct comparison is made between the results obtained by tomographic PIV and stereo-PIV. Experiments conducted in a water facility on the cylinder wake shows the extension of the technique to timeresolved measurements in water at ReD = 540 by means of a low repetition rate PIV system. A high data yield is obtained using high-resolution cameras (2k × 2k pixels) returning 650k vectors per volume. Measurements of the turbulent boundary layer in air at Reθ = 1900 provide a clear visualization of streamwise-aligned low-speed regions as well as hairpin vortices grouped into packets. Finally, in similar flow conditions the boundary layer is measured using a high repetition rate PIV system at 5 kHz, where the spatiotemporal evolution of the flow structures is visualized revealing a mechanism for the rapid growth of a Q2 event, possibly associated to the generation of hairpin-like structures. A. Schroeder, C. E. Willert (Eds.): Particle Image Velocimetry, Topics Appl. Physics 112, 103–125 (2008) © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008 104 Gerrit E. Elsinga et al.