Event-based cameras for data acquisition in time-resolved Pressure-Sensitive Paint measurements

Kurzfassung

Time-resolved Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) measurements are essential for investigating unsteady aerodynamic phenomena such as shock oscillations, vortex interactions, and flutter. Conventional high-speed CMOS cameras acquire complete image frames at fixed rates, producing massive datasets, although sometimes only a small fraction of pixels show relevant intensity changes. This makes real-time processing impractical and data storage highly demanding. This work explores the use of event-based cameras (EBCs) as a fundamentally different acquisition approach for time-resolved PSP. Unlike frame-based cameras, EBCs record only local intensity changes asynchronously at each pixel, resulting in lower memory requirements, minimal latency, negligible motion blur, and high dynamic range. The method is validated first in a laboratory setup with a pulsed nitrogen jet over an iPSP-coated plate and then applied to a 2D airfoil in the transonic wind tunnel. The results demonstrate the feasibility of event-based acquisition for time-resolved PSP and highlight its potential for low-latency, datadriven monitoring of unsteady aerodynamic phenomena.