Validation and Application of Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry for Large Scale Convective Air Flow

Abstract

Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry for large scale applications (LST-PIV) is applied to a convection cell to measure the large scale flow structures in forced convection. The technique is capable to capture the three-dimensional instantaneous flow field in a measurement volume. In order to validate the implementation of the Tomographic PIV algorithm and to demonstrate that the large scale flow structure in the convection cell can be predicted properly, the data is compared to planar PIV data. The LST-PIV reveals the same global flow structure as with planar PIV. The rms value of the difference between the LST- and planar PIV data amounts to 0.0088 m/s whereas the volume averaged velocity in the measurement volume is 0.11 m/s. However, small regions exist in which the differences are as large as 0.0182 m/s. It is concluded that the larger differences between the two sets of data are mainly caused by the not yet fully converged flow statistics and to a small extend by disturbance of the inflow due to particle injection.